Warlord of Kor | Page 2

he tried to follow the curves and angles he would soon find his head swimming. There was a quality to these ancient buildings which was not quite understandable to a Terran mind, as though the old Hirlaji had built them on geometric principles just slightly at a tangent from those of Earth. The curve of the arch drew Rynason's eyes along its silhouette almost hypnotically. He caught himself, and shook his head, and turned again 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 across the floor from where they were clamped to the deep indentations of the temples. Massive boney ridges circled the shadowed eyes set low on the head, directly above the wide mouth which always hung open while the Hirlaji breathed in long gulps of air. Two atrophied nostrils were situated on either side and slightly below the eyes. The neck was so thick and massive that it was practically nonexistent, blending the head with the shoulders and trunk, on which the dry skin stretched so thin that Rynason could see the solid bone of the chest wall. Two squat arms hung from the shoulders, terminating in four-digited hands on which two sets of blunt fingers were opposed; Horng kept moving them constantly, in what Rynason automatically interpreted as a nervous habit. The lower body was composed of two heavily-muscled legs jointed so that they could move either forward or backward, and the feet had four stubby but powerful toes radiating from the center. The Hirlaji wore a dark garment of something which looked like wood-fibre, hanging from the head and gathered together by a cord just below the chest-wall.
Rynason, since arriving on the planet three weeks before as one of a team of fifteen archaeological workers, had been interviewing Horng almost every day, but still he often found himself remembering only with difficulty that this was an intelligent being; Horng was so slow-moving and uncommunicative most of the time that he almost seemed like a mound of leather, like a pile of hides thrown together in a corner. But he was intelligent, and in his mind he held perhaps the entire history of his race.
Rynason lifted the interpreter-mike again. "Was Tebron Marl king of all Hirlaj?"
Horng's eyes slowly closed and opened. TEBRON MARL WAS RULER LEADER IN THE 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 BY VIOLENCE 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 been searching for--the point in the history of Hirlaj when wars had ceased, when the Hirlaji had given themselves over to completely peaceful living. He knew already that the transition had been sharp and sudden. It was the last question mark in the sketchy history of Hirlaj which the survey team had compiled since its arrival--how had the Hirlaji managed so abruptly to establish and maintain an era of peace which had lasted unbroken to the present?
It was difficult even to think of these huge, slow-moving creatures as warriors ... but warriors they had been, for thousands of their years, gradually building their culture and science until, apparently almost overnight, the wars had ceased. Since then the Hirlaji moved in their slow way through their world, growing more complacent with the passage of ancient generations, growing passive, and, eventually, decadent. Now there were only some two dozen of the race left alive.
They were telepathic, these leathery aliens, and behind those shadowed eyes they held the entire memories of their race. Experiences communicated telepathically through the centuries had formed a memory pool which each of the remaining Hirlaji shared. They could not, of course, integrate in their own minds all of that immense store of memories 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 of the survey team. They were trained archaeologists ... as well schooled as possible on the worlds of this far-flung sector near the constantly outward-moving Edge, the limit of Terran expansion. Rynason could operate and if necessary repair the portable carbondaters of the team, he knew the fine points of excavation and restoration of artifacts and had studied so many types