Kur of Gor

KUR OF GOR

Volume twenty-eight in the Chronicles of Counter-Earth

by John Norman

Copyright © 2009 by John Norman.

Published by E-Reads. All rights reserved.

This 
ePub edition v1.0 by Dead^Man Dec, 2010

Some might suppose that the Kurii are monsters, but that is distinctly unfair. They are merely another life form. The Kur is often eight to ten feet in height, if it should straighten its body, and several hundred pounds in weight, and is clawed, fanged, long armed, agile, and swift, often moving on all fours when it wishes to move most rapidly, and that is far faster than a man can run. It does not apologize for its strength, its speed, its formidableness. Nor does it attempt to conceal them.

 Once, it seems, the Kur race had a planet of their own, but somehow, apparently by their own hands, it was rendered unviable, either destroyed or desolate. So they searched for a new home, and in our solar system found not one but two suitable planets, planets they set their minds to conquering. But these planets, Earth and it's sister planet Gor, the Counter-Earth, were not undefended. Four times have the Kur attempted their conquest, only to be beaten back by the mysterious Priest-Kings, rulers of Gor.

 As the Kurii lurk deep within an asteroid belt, awaiting the chance to seize their prize, their attention is drawn to a human, Tarl Cabot. Cabot was once an agent of Priest-Kings, but is now their prisoner, held captive in a secret prison facility. But what is their interest in Tarl Cabot? Whatever it may be, one thing soon becomes clear - that Tarl Cabot is a man to be taken seriously.

E-Reads

www.e-reads.com

Copyright ©2009 by John Norman

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

The Gor e-books available from E-Reads:

01—Tarnsman of Gor

02—Outlaw of Gor

03—Priest-Kings of Gor

04—Nomads of Gor

05—Assassin of Gor

06—Raiders of Gor

07—Captive of Gor

08—Hunters of Gor

09—Marauders of Gor

10—Tribesmen of Gor

11—Slave Girl of Gor

12—Beasts of Gor

13—Explorers of Gor

14—Fighting Slave of Gor

15—Rogue of Gor

16—Guardsman of Gor

17—Savages of Gor

18—Blood Brothers of Gor

19—Kajira of Gor

20—Players of Gor

21—Mercenaries of Gor

22—Dancer of Gor

23—Renegades of Gor

24—Vagabonds of Gor

25—Magicians of Gor

26—Witness of Gor

27—Prize of Gor

28—Kur of Gor

29 - Swordsmen of Gor

Prolegomena to the Tale

The thing was a monster, of course.

There could be no doubt about that.

Some of you, naturally enough, might suppose that the Kurii themselves were monsters, but that is distinctly unfair. That would be similar to regarding, say, leopards, or lions, as monsters. They are merely another life form. There is no symmetry involved here, incidentally. Kurii, for example, do not, at least on the whole, regard human beings, in their varieties and configurations, as monsters, no more than human beings would regard sheep, rabbits, squirrels, goats, and such, as monsters. The human being regards such life forms as simply inferior forms of life. And so, too, do the Kurii, on the whole, regard human beings, such small, fragile, weak, vulnerable, slow, fangless, clawless, hairless life forms, as merely an inferior form of life. And, one must admit, a case might be made along those lines, though it might pain one somewhat to recognize or acknowledge it. In some respects, attempting to assume a posture of objectivity in the matter, however briefly, this typical Kur view has much to be said for it. It is doubtless substantially justified, if not in all respects correct. The Kur does recognize, of course, that the human being has certain features worth noting, for example its two prehensile appendages, its upright stature, increasing scanning range, its binocular vision, its occasionally exercised cunning, and such, but these features are not unprecedented, and, indeed, characterize a number of rational and semirational species. The Kur itself, for example, possesses similar features, though perhaps with a keenness and ferocity which constitutes a dimension less of degree than of kind. The human being does possess languages, and cultures and traditions, the latter often alien and inimical to one another, and numerous devices and tools, and even technologies, of an incipient type. These are, however, the latter in particular, inferior to those available to the Kur, when it chooses to make use of such things. The Kur, in many respects, retains, celebrates and cultivates, as a matter of tradition and choice, a number of rituals, habits, responses, and practices which one might, if one did not understand them as the Kur does, be regarded as excessively cruel and barbaric, such as the contests of the rings, and such. But the Kur, which is often eight to ten feet in height, if it should straighten its body, which it seldom does, and several hundred pounds in weight, and is clawed, and fanged, and long armed, and agile, and swift, often moving on all fours when it wishes to move most rapidly, and that is far faster than a man can run, prizes such things as its strength, and its speed, and its sensitivity, that is, in this case, its capacity to be easily aroused to rage. It does not apologize for its strength, its speed, its formidableness, such things. Nor does it attempt to conceal them. The Kurii, as humans, have produced several civilizations, some of which, as those of humans, have survived. But they have taken care to see that what we might tendentiously call their bestiality, or animality, or such, should not have been lost in these civilizations, at least in the surviving ones, to the frictions and abrasions of socialization. If there were Kur civilizations of a passive or benign nature, their historical records have not survived. Whereas the human being is commonly trained to suspect, regret, denounce, and officially repudiate his animal nature, sometimes even to the point of pretending it does not exist, and that he is a mere societal artifact, of whatever sort is currently recommended, the Kur has not cared to avail himself of such extreme and dubious stratagems. To be sure, the animal nature of the human being, driven underground, despising the facades of an acculturated hypocrisy, continues to prowl within, and, by means of a thousand twistings and subterfuges, will have its say. Surely it would be difficult to explain human history without some attention devoted to slaughter, envy, passion, greed, deceit, hypocrisy, ambition, lies, theft, corruption, assassination, murder, contempt, hatred, betrayal, and a large number of such attributes.

The Kur, in a variety of ways, you see, for better or for worse, openly acknowledges and expresses, and fulfills, his animal nature.

I report this. I neither denounce it nor commend it.

I suppose this would count as a difference between the Kur and the average human being. To be sure, if one lacks fangs and claws it is seldom to one's advantage to grapple with those who possess them. The average Kur on the other hand could best, unaided with weaponry, a typical forest sleen, and might seriously tear and bloody even a larl, though the larl would doubtless be the last to feed.

The human being is not really a tame animal, but it pretends to be. Indeed, in its effort to appear tame it may even poison and destroy itself, or, alternatively, and more usually, it may lend its animal nature to others, who will direct it in their own interests. Under the aegis and anonymity of an ideology, for example, what crimes might not be perpetrated with a conscience as clear as distilled venom?

Life exists largely, one notes, of predators and prey, though sometimes these relationships are politely, if not modestly, veiled. Perhaps you have noticed this. Certainly the Kurii are well aware of this and do not feign to ignore it. Nature poisoned, they understand, does not cease to exist, but will thenceforth exist in a deranged and malevolent manner. One of civilization's problems, you see, is to give nature its due and still survive.

The Kurii, in their ugly ways, manage this.

The Kur, in its surviving civilizations, then, gives nature its due, willingly, eagerly. That is why, perhaps, the Kur is what he is, as quick, as formidable, as dangerous as he is. Those who were not did not survive.

The Kur, then, is not a tame animal. It prides itself on its nature, its strength, its agility, its terribleness. It understands itself as a predator and would have it no other way. Daintiness of sensibility does not bring a species to the summit of a food chain.

Like many aggressive, dangerous animals, the Kur, interestingly, has its sense of propriety, and even honor. To be sure these things are normally limited to intraspecific relations. Men, for example, seldom include insects, vermin, cattle, and such, within the community of, say, honor. And the Kur seldom includes the human being within its community of honor. It would be absurd for it to do so.

For generations human beings slew their foes. Later, a great advance in civilization took place, and its name was slavery. For example, women of the enemy, particularly if young and beautiful, might now be kept about, rather as domestic animals, for the pleasure of new masters. Women, throughout human history, have counted as prizes, acquisitions, loot, spoils, and such. And one would be naive not to recognize that this pleases their vanity, even as they might writhe helplessly in their bonds. And things are not really so different now, one supposes, on some worlds, though the rituals of their pursuit and claimancy are subject to considerable variation. The Kurii, on the other hand, do not commonly practice slavery. Most often they eat their foes.

It is alleged, and we suppose with good reason, certainly we have no reason to doubt it, that the Kurii once had a world, a planet. We do not know what world that was, nor what might have been its star. But apparently that world no longer exists, at least as a viable habitat. The ambition, territoriality, aggression, and greed of Kurii groups, coupled with a remarkable technology, apparently resulted in its desolation or destruction. One can imagine the axis of such a world being explosively shifted, disastrously, perhaps even accidentally, producing lethal, global tumults of storms and climates. One might speculate on mines capable of blasting continents into orbit, and, then, consequent upon diminutions of mass, oceans being sucked away into space. Perhaps, too, the world as a whole was literally fragmented, broken into hundreds, perhaps thousands, of irregular, tumbling planetoids incapable of holding an atmosphere. Or perhaps its orbit was explosively affected, merely hurling it too close or too far from its primary, exiling it from a habitable zone. Or perhaps there was a braking of its rotation, perhaps suicidally intended, designed to produce two hemispheres, one a world of unrelieved light and heat, a scalding, furnacelike world, the other a world of perpetual darkness, a silent, polar waste. Perhaps, on the other hand, there was merely a radiological sterilization of the world, perhaps one rendering it progressively incapable of supporting life.

Whatever the particular stimulus or etiology of their migration, the Kurii long ago left their world. They may have voyaged for generations. But it is possible, too, they did not have so far to go. They currently inhabit a set of steel worlds, perhaps hundreds of them, mingled within, shielded within, what we, or you, I suppose, call the asteroid belt. The asteroid belt is perhaps the debris of what was once a planet. It is not impossible, though I do not think it likely, that it is the debris of what was once the planet of the Kurii.