John Norman - Telnarian histories 02 - The Captain

VIP免费

2024-12-05 0 0 1.94MB 342 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

norman, john - telnarian histories 02 - the captain v2.0.rtf

etext v3.0 based on the 1st paperback edition, 1992, ISBN 0-446-36254-9

**********************

Revision History:

v 1.0 spell-checked scan; saved as RTF because of extensive italics use.

v 3.0 proofread against DT, complies w/ ABEB versioning standard 3.0

***********************

The Captain

John Norman

***

This book is dedicated

to all who disapprove of censorship.

***

PROLOGUE

"And then the ships departed, leaving behind them ashes."

-The Annals.

Again I have chosen to begin with an excerpt from the Annals.

It is an excerpt not untypical of the dark and troubled times.

One who has lived in, or knows only, times of sheep will find it difficult to understand

times of wolves.

In this account is continued a story, drawn from the dark and troubled times.

The dark and troubled times were times of wolves.

Again, it must be clearly kept in mind that I do not write to edify or instruct, nor to praise

or blame, nor even, really, to explain, or understand. I am not sure, you see, what are the

criteria for understanding, how I might, so to speak, know if I understood, or only

thought I understood, and perhaps did not really understand. Who can understand

himself, or others, truly? Surely, at least, it is hard for the heart, as for the eye, to look

upon itself. It is always, so to speak, behind its own back. Too, perhaps, in the end, there

is no understanding, no more for us than for the tree, or rock, only that we think that we

understand, that we have that illusion, that natural, comforting illusion, much as sap

might flow in the tree or molecules sleep in the rock.

In short, know, dear reader, whoever you may be, that you are loved, but know, too, that I

strike no bargains with you. It is not my business to tell you what you want to hear, nor to

reassure you that the cosmos, and time and space, and substance, and right and wrong, if

they exist, are tidy, safe, and cataloged upon your shelves. I do not know the measure of

man, nor can I, unlike so many others, weigh his soul, and mark out the boundaries of his

heart. I do not know what is best for him, nor if what is best for him is right or wrong,

nor if right and wrong, in their thousands, are something that he has not yet decided, or

something that was decided for him, long ago, by the movements of molecules in the

primeval nebula. So it is not my business to assure you that the world is as you would like

it to be. It is not I, you see, nor you, but the world that has the last word on such matters.

So let us, given these cautions, and reflections, reverencing reality, and expecting no

more than it is willing to give, patient with mystery, resume our story. It takes place, as

we noted, in the dark and troubled times, in a time of broad-winged vultures, and long-

maned lions, of processions, of marches with arms, of dark ships, soft in the night, and

fires, and ashes, in a strange and dreadful time, a turbulent time, one when life was

harsher and more terrible, and perhaps more real than now. This is a time when men

lived by their wits and strength, and cunning and skill, a time when marches were long,

and weapons so sharp that, as it was said, they could draw blood from the wind. In this

time there were men, and women, and other creatures, and it was a time of endings, and

beginnings, of battles and cities, of harvests and burnings, of taverns and brothels, of

long voyages and bustling markets, in many of which beauty had its price, and times, too,

here and there, well worth remembering, today so far from mind, of fidelity, of discipline,

and honor, and courage. Doubtless it was a dangerous and terrible time in which to live,

that of endings and beginnings, and yet, interestingly enough, nowhere, in all the Annals,

and contemporary documents, not in the letters, the heroic lays, the skaldic verses, the

chronicles, the tracts, the myths, the tales, the saints' lives, the accounts of captains, the

songs of chieftains and kings, the treatises, the sagas, the simplest commemorative

inscriptions, nowhere that I can determine, do I find regrets expressed that one lived

then. Nowhere, as far as I can determine, did anyone express a desire that they might

have existed in another time.

How inexplicable is so simple a thing!

One wonders how such a thing may be.

In a time of sheep men may fail to notice that they are alive, or, at least, may take it

muchly for granted, or not pay much attention to it, but, it seems, that is not the case in a

time of wolves.

And the dark and troubled times were, as we have noted, such a time, a time of wolves.

In such a time, if nothing else, men and women were alive.

Note:

Earlier, in a previous manuscript, we included certain commentaries and

speculations having to do primarily with historiographical matters, which it would

be inappropriate to reiterate here. At this point we will note only that the

chronology of the accounts seems obscure. There are, of course, many difficulties in

dealing with the problematicities of time. Similarly the multiplex labyrinths of

space, it is occasionally speculated, perhaps idly, may enfold one another, or retrace

their passages. It is possible, too, one supposes, that there are dimensions other than

our own, and that the tiers of reality may exceed our horizons, which we take,

naturally enough, like the rodent and insect, to constitute the termini of being.

Perhaps there are parallel, or intersecting, universes, or dimensions. This

possibility, absurd though it may be, suggests the possibility of points of connection

with our own world, perhaps even "corridors" or "gates." Too, some speculate that

the Telnarian world, in some obscure sense, may be our own world, and not

another, that it lies somehow in our own past, or, perhaps, future. Perhaps it was

once our world, and has grown apart. Perhaps we are branches on the same tree,

and as we grow toward the stars, or doom, we can hear, from time to time, the rustle

of one another's leaves in the darkness. But such speculations are doubtless absurd.

Therefore we dismiss them. Lastly I might mention that we have, on the whole,

followed the chronicler's, or chroniclers', if that should be the case, divisions of the

manuscript.

CHAPTER 1

"Remove her clothing," said the connoisseur.

"I see," said the connoisseur.

"She is not mine," said Julian, of the Aurelianii, speaking to the connoisseur. "I would

like, as a favor, for a friend, as a surprise for him, to have her informed, enlightened."

"Trained?" asked the connoisseur.

"Well trained," said Julian.

"Exquisitely?"

"Surely."

"Until she becomes fully what she is, explicitly, manifestly, and can be nothing else?"

"Yes."

"One wonders," mused the connoisseur.

"It is my expectation," conjectured Julian, "that she might prove acceptable."

"That seems possible," said the connoisseur. "Is she alive?"

"I do not know," said Julian.

There was a sudden, soft, startled, involuntary, timid, shamed, helpless cry.

"Keep your hands at your sides," said the connoisseur.

There was an intake of breath. Then there was another small cry, suddenly, much like the

first.

"She will moan well," said the connoisseur.

"Excellent," said Julian.

"Kneel, with your head to the floor," said the connoisseur. "She will require attention, and

frequently," he said.

Julian looked down at her.

"I leave the matter then in your capable hands," said Julian. He then turned about and left.

CHAPTER 2

"Look!" cried a citizen.

Fellows about him laughed.

"It is a bumpkin from an ag world," cried the citizen.

"Where did you get those frocks!" cried another.

The giant raised his hand to his forehead, and, with the back of his hand, wiped away the

rage of sweat. This was not, of course, Telnaria, the home world, but was a summer

world.

Flies swarmed about his face.

It was different in the cool, dark forests of his tribe, taken to be that of the Wolfungs. It

was one of five related tribes, the others being the Darisi, the Basungs, the Haakons and

the Otungs. The Otungs was the largest and fiercest of these five tribes. It was also

considered the parent tribe of these five tribes. It had been muchly devastated, long ago,

as had its brethren tribes, in wars with the empire. We may think, collectively, of these

five tribes as constituting the nation. There were many such nations, composed of diverse

tribes. This particular nation, in which the Wolfungs, the Otungs, and such, figure, was a

nation not regarded, at that time, as one of great importance, particularly after its defeat

in various wars. This particular nation was that of the Vandals. Few people, at that time,

had heard of it. The etymology of the name has been elsewhere discussed. The expression

'nation' is here used advisedly, but not, I think, inappropriately. The expression 'folk' or

'people' would doubtless be more judicious but we are here dealing with political matters

and in such a case it seems more apt, for our readers, to speak of "nations." Too, there is

a tendency, perhaps now too ingrained to be ignored with impunity, to speak of "nations"

in these matters. There are some differences, however, which are not unimportant. In

particular, the relation a member of one of these tribes has to the tribe, or the people, or

folk, or nation, is not to be understood as being identical to that of a citizen to his state,

though there are doubtless similarities. The state, in a sense, is an artificial nation, a

contrived nation, a legal construction, relying upon conventions acknowledged, and

observed, a theoretically voluntary organization, though, to be sure, it may confront the

citizen with all the practical irrefutability and implacable solidity of a given datum, a

condition of being, a law of nature, a family or species. The relation of a citizen to a state

is usually construed, at least in theory, as a contractual one, either implicitly or

explicitly, as in uttering oaths of allegiance, and such. The relationship within the tribe,

on the other hand, is not contractual, neither implicitly nor explicitly, no more than that

of being brothers. One does not participate in a tribe, but one is of the tribe, much as one

finds oneself, through traditions of blood, one of a family, or line. Tribes consist of clans,

and clans of families, and thus one is speaking, here, when one speaks of tribes, of

complicated and extensive networks of human relationships, and predominantly blood

relationships, though in many cases of an extended and tenuous sense. The state rests

upon law, and the tribe on blood. One cannot, in the ordinary course of things, cease to

be a member of tribe, any more than one can cease to be the son of one's father. To be

sure, certain caveats must be entered. For example, one may be accepted into a tribe,

and then one is truly of the tribe; and one may be cast out of the tribe, and thus be no

longer of the tribe; and one may repudiate the tribe, and thus remove oneself from it.

Here, in such considerations, we find that the tribe bears analogies to, for example, the

obtaining of citizenship, the loss of citizenship, the repudiation of citizenship, and such.

The tribe is thus, in a sense, analogous to a biologically founded state. It is thus, actually,

not simply biological, not simply a matter of blood, and, at the same time, it is more than

an abstraction, a matrix of legalities, a creature of convention, profound or otherwise.

There are, of course, many other differences, and many other commonalities, as well. It

may be useful to mention some, as it may render more intelligible some portions of what

follows. Custom is important in the tribe, and law in the state, though it is a matter of

degree, for the state, too, has its customs, and some tribes, at least, have their laws,

though usually the laws in such tribes are unwritten, and are the province of the law-

sayers, who must, in many such tribes, memorize the law, and are responsible for reciting

portions of it at gatherings, to keep it in living memory, usually a third of it at each

annual gathering. Thus the men in such tribes will hear the law as a whole, from its

sayers, once every three years. In many tribes, on the other hand, the court of law is the

hut of the chieftain, and its statutes and codices are his whims. Better put, perhaps, in

such tribes there is no law, but there is the will, the decision, of the chieftain. Citizens are

often literate, while tribesmen are less often so. But, of course, there are illiterate citizens

and literate tribesmen. Men who can read and write are often kept, like interpreters

which, in a sense, they are, in tribes, to aid in the conduct of business, and in transactions

with other communities. Although tribes are diverse, as are men, and hanis leopards, it is

frequently the case that a distinction is drawn within the tribe between what we may think

of as the aristocracy and the yeomen, so to speak, between the high families and the

ordinary free men. In the empire, distinctions obtain between, similarly, the honestori and

the humiliori, the higher, honored classes and the commonality. Within the honestori falls

the patricians, which includes the senatorial class. These relationships are more volatile,

and more subject to mobility, than those within the tribe. For example, one may ascend to

the honestori by appointment or acceptance, an appointment or acceptance often

consequent upon unusual service or merit, or, in some cases, it is rumored, consequent

upon the provision of favors, moneys, and such. The coloni, or tenant farmers and

laborers, fall, obviously, among the humiliori. So, too, do individuals bound to certain

occupations or to the soil, whose numbers were increasing in recent times, due to the

needs of the state to stabilize the population, primarily to assure a continuation of

necessary services and, more importantly, a reliable, locatable tax base. Slaves need not

be mentioned here, no more than cattle, and sheep, as they, too, are domestic animals, a

form of livestock, some of which are quite lovely. There are many other differences, and

similarities, between states and tribes, but it would be tedious, and impossible, to attempt

to enumerate them in a genuinely useful manner, as the factors are numerous, and as

states differ among themselves, as do tribes. A last remark or two will, however, be

helpful. Some think of the tribe, or folk, or people, as having a certain mystical aura.

Doubtless it does. But the reality here is doubtless far more profound than any trivially

conceived mysticism could perceive, as it rests upon genetic profundities, whose origins

lie in the immemorial past, long before shambling creatures began to shape stones and

scratch their dreams on rocks. What may lend the tribe, or folk, or people, its somewhat

mystical air is that tribality has presumably been selected for, biologically, bonded

groups, mutually supportive, and such, tending to have a considerable advantage over

more anarchic social aggregates. In war, for example, in times of fear and danger, would

one rather have at one's side a stranger or a brother? We have spoken of the tribe as

being rather like a biologically founded state. It would be more accurate, perhaps, to

think of the state, or at least the successful state, as being rather like an artificial tribe.

Consider the attempts to induce, artificially, a sense of tribality, of community, or

brotherhood, among disparate individuals, the reliance on symbols, on conditioning, on

myth, and such, anything to increase and consolidate devotion to, and loyalty toward, a

given set of practices and institutions, anything to increase social bonding. And then, of

course, there are the clever individuals who manage, after a time, to see what is obvious,

and then exultantly denounce such tribality altogether. This is the shallow rationality, but

not the deeper rationality. What is not understood is that belonging, community, tribality,

such things, lie within the nature and needs of many men, and that to mock these things,

or to deny him these things, and, indeed, many others which are as much a part of him as

his backbone and heart, is to deny him, to rob him, of a part of himself, without which he

cannot be whole or human. He who has no people, no unit, no brethren, no tribe, so to

speak, no loved ones, no family, what can he be? One requires more to be a man than the

ability to add and subtract with rapidity. To the side of history, forgotten, lie the bones of

scoffers, and shallow mockers, together with those of the groups to whose disintegration

they dutifully and gladly contributed. What can one be without a unit, without a tribe,

without a people? Must one not then be more than man or less than man? Surely such a

one, one so alone, if contentedly so, must be either a god, or beast. But there are other

men, men alone, of course, and many of them, men with no place, no state, no tribe, those

who have asked directions of gods, and failed to receive them, those who have

interrogated beasts, but could not obtain guidance. They do not know who they are; they

do not know if there is a place in which they belong. They are not the scoffers, the

mockers. They are far from such lost, weak ones. They are strong ones, and some are

terrible ones. They are rather the far walkers, the wayfarers, the searchers. It is not that

they repudiate their brethren; rather, on long roads, and in distant places, they search

for them, But such reflections are gloomy. Let us leave them.

"Ho, behold the bumpkin!" cried a fellow, pointing to the giant.

The giant did not think it would need chains to hold the fellow. A cord would suffice, as

it would with a woman.

The giant followed his companion through the streets. Aromatic herbs, in this district, had

been crushed and scattered on the stones. The emperor was now in residence, here, on

this summer world, in one of the many summer palaces. Indeed, it was just that many-

walled domicile, with its polychromatic, labyrinthine geodesies, which constituted the

destination of the giant and his companion.

"Lout, boor!" called another fellow.

But they did not approach more closely. It was easy for them to be bold, at a distance,

and, too, for the guards, a squad of nine, with rifles, who accompanied the giant and his

companion through the streets. Perhaps they thought that the giant was a prisoner. But he

was not such. Had that been wished, it might easily have been managed in other places,

and at other times, on the first ship, for example, on which they had taken their leave

from the Meeting World.

"Cur, clod!" cried a man.

The giant wondered how the fellow might stand up against an ax attack.

"It is not far now," said the giant's companion.

In this district, near the summer palace, no vehicular traffic, save for official vehicles,

usually armored, was permitted. It would have been too easy to approach the walls, and

the metal of the vehicles might have masked the metal of weapons, and the vehicle might

have served as a launching weapon, or as the weapon itself.

The giant enjoyed walking, and movement, and running, as after bark deer in the forests,

for sport. One could pursue the delicate beast for hours at a time, and then, at the end of

the hunt, when they lay helpless, gasping on the leaves, lungs heaving, unable to move,

eyes wild, one could kill them, or let them go. Sometimes one carried them back to the

village, on one's shoulders, to pen them and see to it, later, that they were mated, thence

to be released, pregnant, to the forests, later in soft glades to deliver wet, awkward fawns,

destined in time to be the swiftest of the swift. The eggs of hunting birds, too, were

sometimes stolen from nests, to be hatched by vardas in their coops, the hatchlings later

to be trained to the wrist and thong. Many were the pastimes, and sports, of the forests.

And high among them, one of the most pleasurable, was the mastery, and use, of female

slaves. These, too, at the master's discretion, could be judiciously mated.

"Lout, peasant!"

His large frame had been cramped in the seat cubicles of the snakelike limousine which

had brought them from the hostelry near the port to the pomerium of the sacred district,

within which lay the summer palace.

"Soil worker! Peasant!"

The giant had indeed, at one time, been a peasant, a denizen of a small village, a festung

village, the festung village of Sim Giadini. It is in the vicinity of the heights of

Barrionuevo. This range is located on the world of Tangara. He did not understand why

the work of the peasants, or the peasants themselves, should seem so scorned here, and by

such a dirty, ragged swarm. Did they not eat? Did they not owe their lives, in a sense, to

the labor of such as he once was? Were they so much better than they upon whose labor

they depended? Did they think it easy to guide the plow, to turn heavy soil, to harrow and

disk the fields, to judge seeds, to plant properly, in suitable times and places, to toil long

hours, when one's back was nigh onto breaking, to resist a relentless sun, to hope for rain,

which might not come, to be so hungry at times, to have to yield the tithes to the lofty

festung of Sim Giadini, almost lost in the clouds of the heights?

"Get back!" cried his companion, gesturing toward one of the bolder of the unsolicited

escort. But he did not care to touch him. "It is not that they believe you are a peasant," he

said to the giant. "It is merely a term of abuse."

They continued on their way.

The peasant had not been born in the festung village. He did not know where he had been

born.

He had left the village after killing a man, one named Gathron, who had been his best

friend. He had broken a post over his back, and watched him die, at his feet. Gathron had

attacked him, and Gathron had been his best friend. This was something which the giant

often remembered, that one does not always know, really, who is one's friend and who is

not. The squabble had been over a woman. That, too, had never been forgotten by the

giant, that it had been because of a woman that the business had come about. He regarded

women as dangerous, untrustworthy, and tantalizingly delicious. They were to him as

another form of life, one excruciatingly desirable, one against whom one must always be

on his guard, one which must be managed, controlled, and kept strictly in its place. The

place of woman, such delicious, dangerous, precious, despicable, desirable creatures, was

at the feet of man, rightless and powerless. This was the decree of nature. Free, out of

nature, they will bite at you, and scratch at you, and diminish you, or destroy you, owned,

within nature, on the other hand, deprived of power, no longer dangerous, they find

themselves suddenly with a different vocation, that of, with trepidation, and zeal, in fear

of their lives, devoting themselves eagerly to your service and delight. The answer to the

riddle of woman, and the key to her happiness, is the chain and whip. She must never be

allowed to forget whose hand it is that holds the leather over her.

"It is rather," said the friend, "that they see you are different, that you are clad differently,

that you carry yourself differently, that you walk differently, that you look about yourself

differently." The giant nodded, and brushed away flies. They tended to move toward the

eyes, which were moist, and sparkled. Sometimes they encircled the eyes of babies in

their cradles, tilted there, peering within those flickering orbs, like restless, tiny, winged

crusts.

The giant supposed that he did seem different. It is often that way with animals, he knew,

that one which is different, the goat among sheep, the hawk among vardas, the lion

among wolves, is marked out for abuse, to be bitten, or driven away. Such things were

doubtless owing to the mysteries of being, to those cruel principles or laws without which

life might never have emerged, amoral and hungry, from prehistoric colloidal films.

"Bumpkin!" cried another fellow.

"See the clothing!" cried another.

And so a strange beast, among other beasts, is viewed askance.

"Lout!" cried another.

"Who is your tailor, bumpkin?" called another.

His clothing, true, a rough tunic, of pelts, belted, with leggings, was not of the city, but fit

rather for the forests of his world, affording its protection against wind, and cold, and

brush, that between the meadows and the depths, and, with its mottled darknesses, like

shadows, permitting him to stand unnoticed within five yards of the bark deer, that

lovely, delicate sylvan ungulate. The pelts were those of the forest lion. Such came

sometimes even to the edges of the fields, and, in the winter, softly, to the palings of the

stockade itself. The giant had killed the animal himself, with a spear. He had gone out

alone. This is not intended to elicit surprise. It was not that unusual. Indeed, in many

tribes, a young man was not permitted to mate within the tribe unless he had given

evidence of skill and courage, until he had demonstrated his worthiness or prowess to

experienced older men, hunters and warriors. One way of accomplishing these things, or

providing such evidence, was to slay such a beast, or, in daylight, an alerted foe.

Sometimes the young man comes to the hut of the father, to sue for the hand of a

daughter. "I hear a lion in the forest," says the father, if he approves of the young man,

though there may be no such sound. The young man then rises gladly and leaves the hut.

He does not return until he brings with him the pelt of such a beast. Thongs from the pelt

will be used to bind the wrists of the daughter in the mating ceremony. The mating, you

see, is understood as a binding of the woman, and it is done that she may understand her

relationship to the male, as, in effect, that of a captive to her captor, that she is to please

him, and such. As she is a free woman, her wrists are usually bound before her body.

This is to honor her, and show her importance, for it is common to bind those of a slave

behind her body. Upon the pelt, of course, the mating is later consummated. In such

fashions, with many variations, with diverse tests, and such, do the Wolfungs, and many

similar tribes, take care to supervise the breeding within the nation.

"Bumpkin!" cried the fellow, running at the side.

"Do not mind him," said Julian.

About the neck of the giant was hung a rude necklace, of the claws of the lion he had

slain.

It was but one of many which had fallen to his spear.

"Boor, lout!"

"It is not just that you are different," said his companion. "They fear you, for they have

heard of the troubles at the borders, the loss of stations, the incursions which have

reportedly taken place, though denied officially."

"I am not of the cities," said the giant.

"I offered you silken robes, even a uniform of the guards," said his companion.

"It is hot," said the giant. He pulled at the laces of the tunic, opening it, baring his chest.

"Sherbets and ices will be served in the palace," said his companion.

"I do not like being without a weapon," said the giant.

"Only authorized personnel may carry such in these precincts," said his companion. "Too,

do you think that small blade would protect against the blast of a rifle?"

"No," said the giant, thoughtfully. But he knew that men such as he, in places, men not so

different from himself, had such weapons.

Let those of the empire consider that.

There was considerable obscurity having to do with the antecedents of the giant. Though

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

norman,john-telnarianhistories02-thecaptainv2.0.rtfetextv3.0basedonthe1stpaperbackedition,1992,ISBN0-446-36254-9**********************RevisionHistory:v1.0spell-checkedscan;savedasRTFbecauseofextensiveitalicsuse.v3.0proofreadagainstDT,compliesw/ABEBversioningstandard3.0***********************TheCap...

展开>> 收起<<

John Norman - Telnarian histories 02 - The Captain.pdf

共342页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

John Norman - Telnarian histories 02 - The Captain

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: