The Kar-Chee Reign Read online

  “One, is if we menace or seem to menace them: they strike back. It is perhaps only natural. We have nothing in common except life and death and a desire to occupy the same space; we cannot communicate, our species with their species. And so what else is there to do, if one strikes out at or seems likely to strike out at the other, except to strike back?

  “I’ve said that this is natural. Not ‘good’ — ‘natural.’

  “But there’s another level on which they interest themselves in us, Mother, and this seems to me less natural, in the sense that it is less inevitable. They sometimes use us for their sport.”

  The older woman’s face changed; in a low voice she said, “My child, you babble.”

  Lors took a deep breath and shook his head. He seemed ten years older than the stripling who, a short while ago, had had no greater concern than hunting a deer or lying with a girl. The soft lines had gone from his face, his voice was deeper and harsher, his movements at the same time more cautious and more emphatic. “He isn’t babbling at all, Moma,” he said, straightforwardly. “We’ve all seen it. We can’t forget it. That’s what’s bothering your son, I’m afraid. Have you ever seen a cat playing with a mouse or with a very young rat? Is that really play? Isn’t it a kind of punishment, too? The cat gives pain and gets pleasure. And in the end, no matter how long it takes, the smaller creature dies.

  “Well, that’s what we’ve seen the Devils doing. We’ve seen the dragons bring in men, one at a time, and the other dragons and the Kar-chee form a circle, do you see? Then begins the baiting, the sport, the play, the torture, call it whatever you want. The dragon picks up the man and tosses and worries him the way a dog might do with a rat. But the dragon is careful at first not to kill the man, as the cat is careful not to kill the mouse. It even drops the man and lets it try to escape. But there is no escape!

  “The Kar-chee strike the man down when he tries to get away from the circle they’ve made around him. The Kar-chee drive the man back. And then the dragon begins to work on him again. Teeth and claw, claw and teeth…. We’ve seen it; we’ve all seen it.”

  Duro said, “We’ve seen it.”

  Tom said, “Yes. We all saw it.”

  And Rickar, in a low, low voice, grinding his teeth: “We saw it. We did see it. I saw it, too.”

  The crowd groaned. Mother Nor moistened her lips. “If you all did, then there is no need for imagining or making believe, is there? But this is only another form of punishment, of the punishment the Devils inflict upon men for violating the practice of justice and equity. My husband would never say differently, of that I am sure.” She took her son by his arms. He looked at her now, his face still fixed in that dreadful grimace. “Rickar, tell me now — where is your father?”

  “In Hell,” he said.

  There was a long silence. “He followed us down, he and Lej; not to help me get out, but to see that I never got out. It was better, he thought, for me to die so that he could still say that he was right all along than for me to get out and prove that he was wrong all along — ”

  “No, Rickar. My son, no — ”

  “And then they were all aroused, all the Kar-chee Devils, and they started after us all, and we fled — we fled — my friends who’d risked their lives to save me — but they didn’t flee, Father and Lej didn’t flee, no, not they. They stayed behind, you know that? They stayed behind to preach a sermon to the Devils to tell the Devils how right they were and how wrong we were and they urged the Devils on after us —

  “But the Devils didn’t take us! The Devils took them! And they screamed — and they screamed — and we could hear them screaming!”

  And he threw back his head and he screamed himself, again and again and again, and then he pitched forward and fell upon his face with his eyes rolled up, and his mother knelt and gathered him in her arms and soothed him and cradled him and murmured, over and over again, “My son, my son…. My son, my son….” She must have realized that she had lost her husband forever — and in his person not her husband alone but her leader, the guide of her life in its spiritual and communal aspects, the head of her people — and under circumstances the most cruel: cruel in the physical circumstances of her loss, and perhaps more cruel in that if his teachings were correct, as she had always implicitly believed, then he himself had been a sinner whom she had always deemed to be righteous, and if his teachings had not been correct then he had lived and died in folly — and in a void and a chaos all his followers were now to find themselves.

  • • •

  And in the night the alarm was sounded and the cry arose. “Dragons! Dragons! Devils! Devils! Dragons! Dragons!” The people rose up from their slumber and their beds and heaped wood upon the fire and then, confused, in terror and concern, milled around, uncertain of anything except their own fear and the very uncertainty which perhaps terrified them as much.

  Liam had not lain down. He and his friends had eaten and had then talked themselves to sleep. He awoke to find his knees wet with the sweat of his face and had a confused recollection of having thus fitfully slumbered, half-sitting, half-crouching. He was afterward never altogether sure if he had seen the dragons, there, at the perimeter of the camp, upreared and immense in the firelight and the moonlight; or if the image had been nothing else than a vision of the night, a creation of the obscurity and uncertain illumination, the dream from which he had been ripped, the fears which pressed in and down upon him.

  But the dragons had certainly been there. And they had flung their monstrous message into the enemy camp, the camp of men, and then retreated into the mists and darks from which they had come.

  Message?

  Messages!

  Stones flung into an ant-heap were nothing in the creation of panic and swarming and fleeing compared to this. And no wonder. Liam saw the things as they came flying through the air and thudded upon the ground and bounced and flapped and then lay still; he saw this, but did not then in that split instant of fire-flickered and moon-silvered time see clearly enough to recognize it. It was not very long, though, before the ground was clear enough of people — screaming, maddened, gone off into the darkness — for him to venture out and over. And there he saw full clearly what was there, and for the first time in all this long sequence of events he felt something as close to guilt as he ever came to it. He had not felt it in Britland, leading his followers to (as he had thought) safety and the sea; he had not felt it in the raft, not even when famine and thirst and death had laid heavy hands upon it; but he felt something like it now —

  “Gaspar….” It was Tom who spoke, in a stifled, sickened tone.

  And Lors, his mouth stiff, made the second identification. “Lej, too….”

  Duro said nothing. Rickar began to weep. Liam looked. He knew what he was seeing, and he knew immediately why he was seeing it. It had been his idea to flay the two dead Kar-chee and use their cortices for stalking-horses. The other Kar-chee had been intent on carrying away Rickar: true. But they had certainly been aware that two of their number had been slain by men. Yet neither then nor afterward had they seemed particularly concerned. And when that dreadful and strident Kar-chee alarm had been raised by the discovering one in the great cylindrical pit, he holding the flayed integument of one of the two over the rim of the ramp so that all the others could see, and when the shrill sound had come, repeating, echoing, prolonged, from (seemingly) everyone of the other Kar-chee there — when they had abandoned their works of repair and poured upward in pursuit —

  Even then Liam had somehow assumed that it was only the death of their fellows which had aroused and concerned them, and nothing more.

  But now, looking down, his heart pounding violently, his mouth filled with a sick taste and the muscles of his jaw and stomach stiffened against nausea, the sounds of panic around the camp transmuted into a clamoring buzz; now, as he gazed upon the meticulously flayed skins of Gaspar and of Lej, skins which contained no bodies — now, at last, he knew better.

  What syn
apses had been sparked or set in motion by the Kar-chee discovery of what men had done to those two Kar-chee, what reflexes or reactions set off, what deep instincts or emotions roused, Liam did not and probably forever could not know; but he could and did know that they had been exceedingly great. Some faint hypothesis occurred to him: perhaps only by this act of his and his friends had the Kar-chee suddenly or finally been convinced that the race of mankind was an intelligent race capable of intelligent i.e. malign i.e. dangerous action; not merely any longer stinging ants or biting dogs….

  But this was speculation and nothing more; it was not facts. The facts lay before them — the empty husks which had once covered Gaspar and Lej.

  “This cannot go on,” someone said. “This cannot be endured. It if can be done to Gaspar and to Lej, then no one is safe.

  Liam turned to see who had spoken. He marveled at her control. “No one is safe, Mother Nor. And never will be until — ”

  Her face was like a mask in the lights of the spurting fire and the gibbous moon. Her voice sank. “If such things are done in the green wood, what shall be done in the dry …?” She threw up her hands. “What shall be done, what shall be done? What can be done? I would say, Flee, let us flee again, ready for flight or not. I would say, Let us leave this accursed land! But all the Earth is accursed, and there is no part of it to which we can go where these Devils cannot follow and torment us again.

  “Always I believed that following the clear and just path of Manifest Nature, the path of charity and justice and diligent equity, would eventually see an end to suffering and punishment and flight — ” Her face worked. Suddenly it became stiff and still and masklike again. Liam shifted; she put out her hand to stop him. Then, slowly, slowly, as he watched, wanting to move and be about doing things, unable to stop watching and wondering, her face changed and became certain and satisfied and vigorous once more; and yet changed greatly from her former face of days.

  She said, “I see now quite clearly how it is. The Devils have over-reached themselves. They have ceased to be instruments and have begun to move of themselves instead of being moved by Nature. The results, of course, are evil, hideously evil” — her hand’s sweeping gesture indicated the things on the ground she did not look at — “but at least now they have set us free. Resistance is no longer sinful, for it is now resistance against sin itself.” She looked at Liam. “And we will have to consider, consider quickly, what form resistance can take. You will have thought of that, and as soon as the people are rallied and returned, you will tell us about that. Leadership must come from you, for I am too old.”

  He shook his head. Her face fell; her hands went out to him. “Rally the people, by all means, Mother Nor. And explain your new discovery to them. But I can’t stop and wait. There is something I must do now … perhaps I should have done it before, but events …

  “One thing only I must impress on you, and you must impress it on everyone else: Get as far away from the water and stay as far away from the water as you can. Do you understand?”

  Faintly, she frowned. “I understand the words,” she said, nodding. “But I don’t understand the meaning which must be beneath them. Are you asking me to act on faith alone? All my life I have acted on faith, but it was never at any time only on faith, for always there was enough evidence that the ways of the faithful produced a better result than those of the unfaithful.”

  He told her that he had little evidence which was able to be looked at calmly and understood. But he had some such. And he would tell her what he proposed to do and what he expected would have happened by and by as the result, and what the results of the result would inevitably be. She listened further. She looked, and she nodded. “So may it be,” she said. “I will tell them. And …” She ceased, suddenly, to be leader, became again mother. Liam understood her look, her gesture.

  “No, Rickar I will not need. Let him stay here, and let him add his descriptions to your explanation.” He didn’t bother to add, Besides, he is in no condition to go off and do anything else. “Duro — get back to your father’s place and spread the same word all around there, and do your best to see that others spread it as far as can be. Tom — that goes for you, your father’s place, and you see to it that the word gets as far around the coast and all the lowlands. Have you got it? I’ll give it to you again. Listen.”

  “Get as far away from the water and stay as far away from the water as you can.”

  • • •

  The air was as close as ever before, and, as before, it throbbed with the pulse of the engines from far inside and below. “I hoped we’d never have to come back,” Lors muttered, as they walked very quickly and very carefully down yet another of the many corridors leading off from the many caves … leading inward … leading downward.

  Liam said, “Well, it’s for damned certain that we’ll never be coming back again.” He grunted, and his mouth moved wryly. “One way or another …” His voice died away. They moved along, heads moving cautiously from side to side.

  After a time they emerged once more onto the ramp running threadwise down the inside of the great cylindrical pit. They did not peer over and down this time; it would have been a needless and useless risk. And one other thing, too, was different now from the last time — this time their route was up.

  The strange lamps cast their strange light. They looked across and over: they saw no one. They quickened their steps. Upward they climbed. Upward and up. And finally they came to the first strut. They did not know what kind of metal it was or by what process it had been worked or by what process cast. It was fixed into the wall of the pit firmly and on all sides were fixed into the wall of the pit firmly and on all sides were fixed the other struts, on this level and on levels above, supporting a framework or scaffolding which seemed to go up almost forever, up to the dome roofing over the pit itself.

  Lors stroked it almost reverently. “So much metal,” he said, awed.

  “Up with you, or let me,” Liam said, curtly. Lors sucked in his breath with a hiss; he reached out his arms, grasped, set his right foot down, then his left. Liam followed behind him. There were odd curves and indentations in the girder, their purpose unknown, but they provided excellent hand- and foot-holds. Upward and onward they climbed, and finally reached the first of the horizontal sparrings. Here they paused to rest a short moment, and in the comparative silence they heard the sound of water trickling, and beyond that they heard something else.

  A voice. A human voice.

  They climbed out and alone another distance to have a clearer view downward. The voice was muttering. Then it hummed something. Then it said, quite clearly, “I know you’re there!”

  Lors shot out his hand, grasped Liam’s wrist. Liam pressed his lips together, shook his head.

  “I know you are there. Don’t hide. Why hide? No use hiding: I know you are there. I’ll find you. I came here for that. Do you hear? Do you hear, Devils? Devils? Do you hear I’m here?” The man down below laughed, low at first; then, losing control, louder, loudly, a whooping sound which ended abruptly as though axed.

  Only the thump of the engines, the dripping of the water….

  “Devils, Devils, I’m going to get you for what you did to my father. He was the best father who ever lived. I didn’t deserve him. It’s my fault he’s dead. I was bad. But it was you who killed him, Devils.” The words sank lower, vanishing into gibberish which then became a low and agonizing moan which froze the hairs of Lors’ neck.

  Cautiously, he and Liam climbed farther out, cautiously peered down. It was, of course, Rickar. Sometimes he moved with exaggerated, almost ridiculous care, picking up each foot and lifting it high before setting it down again. Sometimes he walked sideways, like a crab, hugging the wall. Once he stumbled and Lor’s hand dug into Liam’s wrist — but Rickar did not go over the side. He landed on his knees, and, thus, still on his knees, continued on his way, crawling, creeping, crooning his insane warning. Downward. Downward. Down, down … down….
>
  Liam sighed. He shook his head again. There was nothing they could do for Rickar this time. Nothing.

  Their route continued to be upward. They climbed the girders, struts and spars like clumsy monkeys; ground-apes, returning rather gingerly to the long-forsaken trees. The sound below had either ceased or had sunk below their capacity to hear. There was once again nothing but the slow drip-drip of water. And then, gradually, another sound began to make itself known to them. A slow, infinitely slow, but infinite and endless racheting. It seemed to repeat its dull, one-note message over and over again forever as they climbed and climbed …

  … and climbed….

  The reticulations of the scaffolding finally came to a visible end, and there, above them, a railing surmounted the whole and circled about beneath the dome. And there, riding the railing and seeming to swallow it as it did so and then to extrude it as it passed on, was an engine of sorts … fastened right behind it, another engine … fastened right behind the second, a third … and then no more. The engines mounted up to the rim of the dome. They grasped the rim, grappled with it. The engines moved slowly, so very, very slowly; they almost seemed not to move at all. The struggle was a long and slow one. Water oozed in along the rim, fell in minor torrents. The engines approached … the engines worked … at last, after longer time than Liam could count in his head, the engines crept on along.