The Kar-Chee Reign Read online

  “By the time we get back with anything — if we find anything — they’ll all be hungry, anyway,” his brother pointed out. He looked windward, made as though to reload his crossbow.

  “The longer we wait and gibble-gabble, the hungrier they’ll be. Up,” said the elder. And turned and started. Tom-small and the younger boys followed at once. So, after a moment, did Duro. They went upland, all of them, but they came within shot of no game. Once they stopped stock-still at the sight of three deer outlined upon the top of a ridge, heads all up. For a moment nothing moved, nothing was heard. Then, far off and below, it came … deep and distinctive and strange, and it sounded again — the deer darted off and were gone — and it seemed to have ended upon a higher, a questioning note.

  “It’s no horn,” guest Tom-small said, low-voiced, evidently answering his own unspoken questioning.

  But as to what it was, none had any suggestion. They nodded when Lors said, finally, “All game gone upland … nobody beating besides us, that we know of … a bad smell, a strange smell … and now a strange noise….

  “My guess is that whatever made the smell is making the noise. It’s gotten late. We’d better go back and tell Popa, that’s the best thing, and we can kill stock for the guests and then we’d all better find out what this thing is.”

  As they started back, Duro said, “Maybe it would be better to find out as soon as can be, even if it’s got to be done on an empty belly.” His brother grunted his agreement. The smaller boys were all silent, and kept close instead of spreading out. The sun declined away behind the mountain and the air felt chilly on their skins — and perhaps it was not just the air.

  They followed Lors without questioning when he picked a trail over fallen rock which would cut time off their return. And it was while the loose shale was still sliding a bit under their feet that they all stopped short with no more sound at first than the hissing intake of breath and looked down where his hand pointed and where it trembled despite all his brave effort.

  Along the distant shore below, at that same shelving beach where the first Rowan had brought his tiny boat ashore, there, outlined against the wine-dark sea, they saw the forms of two utterly strange and utterly dissimilar figures stalking across the twilight landscape — one erect, though slightly stooping; the other on all four giant legs which held it high above the sand.

  Slowly, fearfully, they sank down and spread themselves flat upon the shale. After an infinity of time the two strange beasts passed out of sight around a bend in the shore line. Then, crouching, sliding, trotting almost as they squatted and slid, spraddle-legged, the young hunters vanished into the safe-promising shadows. And only when the dearly familiar walls of the homesite, outlined by the vigorous fires still burning outdoors, came into view did any of them speak. It was the youngest and smallest of the boys.

  “Devil,” he said. “Devil.” He was not swearing. “Devil — Devil — it was the Devil!” he chattered.

  And Lors said, “Maybe…. Maybe…. But — which one?”

  II

  THE RAFT WAS low on one side. Whether the underbeams had been lashed wrong, or if something in the wood had caused more and sooner waterlogging, or — No one worried or cared about that any longer. It was accepted with a brute resignation, like the burning sun and the scant food and drink, the waves which lapped up and over all around and left salt encrustations which itched and stung the swollen flesh. Three people already had gone off that perilous slope — one had slipped and slid, shrieking, while the others had looked on and blinked their burning eyes and licked their cracking lips and otherwise done nothing; one had simply rolled off, a scatter of rags and flailing limbs, uttering no sound; and the third, with a pleased smile and a look of anticipation, had just walked off at a brisk pace, knee-deep before he’d plunged out of sight.

  Now and then a shark circled, leisurely, and those who still had the energy to do so crawled as high as they could, as though fearing that the great cartilaginous fish might suddenly sprout legs and climb up after them. And now and then a huge sea-turtle flippered by, paying them no attention at all; some eyed it hungrily, but helplessly: the small boat in which they might have pursued it had gone in a storm uncounted time ago, and even had it remained it was doubtful if any of them now would have had the strength to man it.

  Some few fishing-lines still dangled, some presently without even hooks, and none with other bait than a bit of cloth of similar counterfeit. It had been days since any of these had succeeded in catching anything — a bony, ugly thing, but the man whose line it adhered to had eaten it at once, fearful and famished and secretive and swift. Then he had vomited it all up. Then he had eaten it a second time, shameful and slow and sick.

  It had been months. It seemed like months. Perhaps it was only weeks. Perhaps, by now, years. Liam would know, if anyone knew, Cerry thought. Vaguely, she considered asking Liam if he still kept up his records. But the notion soon ceased to interest her. She had too little voice left, her mouth and throat were too dry, for her to call over to him where he sat, crouching, motionless. He might be dead. But she didn’t want to face this possibility. If Liam were dead then the rest of them were as good as dead. So she made her mind consider other things.

  Suppose the raft were to encounter flying fish. A whole entire school of them. Then the sail and the awning could be used as nets. Everyone would have something to eat. And then — since flying fish lived in the tropics and in the tropics it was very rainy — then it would rain, and the rain water would be caught in those same sails and awnings. All at once everyone would be better, healthy, alert, in good spirits and humor. Their luck thus once turned, obviously land would be the next thing to appear. Land!

  It would be a good land, with friendly people, not savage, neither terrible nor terrified. The land and people didn’t know of hunger, and there were no dragons in that land and neither were there Kar-chee. And … and then …

  Cerry wondered what was next, smiling and giving little nods. The bubble did not so much burst as simply vanish; and, the vision forgotten as though it had never begun, she wondered and fretted mildly how long they had all been on the raft. At least a month. She had had her courses just before they’d embarked — a minor discomfort and a common and regular one: odd that she should remember it against the background of that hideous time and trouble — and then, surely, she had had them again at least once since then, aboard the raft. She could not remember it having happened another time. Which meant that it had not been two months yet. Or, possibly, that her body no longer functioned as it once had. Small wonder, if this were so. But what if Liam were dead?

  The fear was worse than the pain of finding out. So, slowly and so slowly, Cerry raised herself onto her painful hands and knees and began to crawl and to creep and to climb across the cant of the raft toward the figure which half-sat, half-crouched, in the splotchy shade of the tattered awning. And the gorgeous golden sun beat down unceasingly from the blazing blue of the silent sky. There was a child stretched out, face down, back moving in slight rise and fall of feeble breath. Cerry did not dare stop or try to move other than as she was moving. Neither did the woman move who croaked, “Murderers! Murderers!” as Cerry dragged herself over the child.

  “Are you human beings?” the woman demanded. “Or are you dragons? Kill me, kill me, only leave my child alone….” Her head, at least, at last, commenced to weave from side to side, but by then Cerry was past. “Help, help,” the woman croaked, striking her head with her skeletal paw of a hand. “Human beings: help, help. There are dragons on the raft….” The child gave a ghost of a whimper. “Yes, my precious. Don’t cry, my dearest love. Mother’s coming….” She moved toward the child like a crippled snake.

  A hot gust smote the sea. The torn cloth slapped and snapped. The raft shook. A wave hit it; it shook again. Something dead went floating by and someone not quite dead pointed and wept, but it was too far away. Liam had one brown eye and one blue eye and otherwise his eyes were red as blo
od. His sun-bleached, salt-encrusted hair moved in the light wind like clumps of dirty marsh grass. He didn’t blink or breathe as Cerry came lurching and creeping. “Liam, don’t be dead. Tell me how long it’s been,” Cerry asked. He didn’t blink or breathe. She could see the wind moving the little hairs on his chest, but she couldn’t see the chest move.

  She butted his knee with her head, like a lamb forcing its dam to give down milk. He fell over on his side. “Don’t be dead, Liam,” she begged.

  After minutes, hours, years, he said something. He made a sort of snoring noise. He said something. “What, Liam? What?”

  She crept close. “Maybe a dream,” he said. She listened. She strained to hear. The man who had pointed to the dead thing watched them. He sat up a bit. He watched them. The mother stroked her child’s face. But her eyes did not really watch the child. Her eyes watched them. “May be a dream, Cerry,” Liam said. “But I think I did. One night … I think …”

  It had not been a dream. He had. He really had. In the box with the rotting ropes and other gear and tackle, he had really, on that night he half-remembered, secretly and cautiously placed some food — then, when food had still been plentiful and all had been optimistic, for they would soon reach Gal; none had ever been to Gal but all had been sure it was only a week’s voyage away — against the possible time when, if Gal had not been reached, they might well be thankful for the food. And of course they had not in any week’s voyage reached Gal, they did not know now if it were one week or a year of weeks, if winds and currents had carried them forever past it or if Gal itself had been sunk by the Kar-chee. But the food was still there.

  It lay in her hands as she brought it up to the surface for long enough for her to see that it was in a bag sewn of soft cloth, part of a dress, and by the feel of it potatoes. Small, gone soft, gone sprouty, but food. “It’s to be divided,” she warned herself softly. “It’s to be divided!” she shrieked as it was torn from her hands. The man who had pointed to the dead thing in the sea and wept because it was too far to secure it for the raft did not weep now, but gibbered and spat and clawed Cerry’s face with his left hand. The bag was torn from his right hand by the woman of the child. “It’s to be divided!” screamed Cerry.

  And it was divided, though not according to the calm and rational scheme intended. Who would have thought there was still so much life left in them all? So much evil, so much greed? The dead rose up from the deck which was their grave and screamed and growled and fought. They bit the hands which held the shrunken, blackened potatoes, and clawed them up into their own hands. But the woman of the child, when the cloth of the bag ripped and the black manna fell and scattered, did not use her hands to seize. She crawled upon her hands away from the scene, her sunken cheeks full and smiling. She crawled to her child and kissed the child mouth to mouth and chewed for the child and fed it as a bird is fed. The thin, scrannel throat moved, slowly, slowly. When the child smiled at last, the woman, her own mouth now empty of all but love, said, in loving and rapturous tones, “There, my darling…. There, my precious. Did you like that? Was it good?” She composed herself beside the child, carefully arranged some tatters of her dress so as to cover the small face from the shade, and then, still smiling, died.

  The man who had pointed to the dead thing in the sea and had wept and then later had snatched the sacket of food wept again. Or so it seemed. Drops flowed down his face, but they were red and he lay still. And more than one looked at him and looked at each other and looked away from each other and then looked back at him. For the few and small bits of provision in the sacket were gone now, but the hunger which had been lying somewhat dulled and anesthetized was wide awake now and gnawing. And the man himself was dead now and he was not at all too far away to be reached.

  • • •

  “Are you human beings? Or are you dragons?” one of them had lately asked. And now it might be that none of them was at all sure.

  • • •

  In ravaging and in ravishing their own world for its minerals in order to make the means to abandon that world forever for newer and fresher, richer ones, the men of Earth had carried on — more or less — as they had done for the mere thousands of years in which mining had engaged the attention of their species. The holes they dug were deeper and the pits they scooped were wider and both of course were more numerous. They had left the landscape scarred and fractured, but it was, when they had done with what they were doing, still recognizably the same landscape.

  But long before the Kar-chee were done with it, it was no longer so.

  The Kar-chee were ten feet tall and a dull, dull black, with heads which seemed tiny in comparison to their height and perhaps particularly in comparison to the huge anterior fore-limbs. In this they resembled the mantis, but in nothing else did they resemble anything else with which the scattered handfuls of infinitely wearied peoples on Earth were familiar. Kar-chee they were called, from a real or a fancied similarity to sounds which they were heard to make by those few who had come close to them, close enough to hear them, and departed whole; but what they called themselves, no man knew. There had been no dialogue between the two species. Had there ever been between men and ants?

  So, the old dwellers called the incomers Kar-chee in much the manner that a child calls a dog Bow-wow — though the Kar-chee, of course, were nothing at all like dogs. The Kar-chee, in a way, were audible ants. Conquering ants. Ants which brought with them their fulcrum, and, finding a place on which to rest it, did what Archimedes never could do, and moved the Earth.

  Piece by piece.

  Of old, in the lost land of California, came the Americans and dug and washed the dirt for gold, and left behind great heaps of soil from which all profit was extracted. After them came the Chinese, and washed the once-washed dirt again and, counting labor and toil as nothing, extracted profit from the unprofitable, content with tiny flecks of dust where only nuggets had satisfied their predecessors. Neither of them, of course, in the least understanding the other. But understanding, at least, that there was something to understand.

  This much seemed at least clear — the Kar-chee had done this before. Their movements were too practiced, their equipment too suitable, their techniques too efficient, to allow for any of it to be new to them. Scavengers of worlds beyond number they must have been, for ages beyond counting; and in those worlds throughout those ages they had developed systems of working titanic changes in oceans and in continents in order to get at and get out the veins and pockets and the merest morsels of minerals and such as were left behind by human exploiters. First they reprocessed the slag and the tailings and the cinders and the ashes and all the mountainous heaps of (to man) worthless byproducts. Then they scored great trenches on land and sea and turned their contents over and over again like earthworms, digesting and re-digesting. They peeled the earth like an onion. But all of this was the merest beginning….

  When they had done what they wanted with a given section of land, for the present time, at least (and who knew what “time” meant for them? how long they lived? or how they died, or where, or at all?), then with inhuman efficiency and ineffable insouciance they disposed of it. They triggered the long-set charge provided by the pre-existent San Andreas Fault, and California in convulsions and hideous agonies sank shrieking into the sea. And before the waters had in the least begun to settle, they were convulsed again as the floor of the Gulf of California arose trembling and quaking and flinching from the air it had not encountered in countless ages. The Kar-chee barely waited for it to dry before they settled onto it like flies upon a carcass and commenced to suck the hidden treasures of its sands.

  There must have been some plan determining which lands should live and which should die, which perish by volcanic fire and which by the overwhelming of water. But no man knew in the least what plan there was. Sometimes, though, it did seem that here a land was sunken and here a land raised up, not because of immediate particular concern for either but instead because of probl
ems concerning the adjustment and readjustment of the weight upon the Earth’s surface. Thus Gondwanaland arose again, and lost Atlantis, and land-masses — subcontinents or great islands — were newly designed and surfaced, while the familiar terrains were often fragmented or destroyed. And all the while the vast equipages of the Kar-chee, like huge and mobile cities, alien beyond the phantasizing ability of the human mind, slowly and relentlessly roamed surfaces and sea-depths, turning and churning and extracting and processing. And the great black hulks of the Kar-chee ships came and went … endlessly … endlessly….

  And — meanwhile — what of man?

  At first, then, of man: nothing. What of the ants, when man had first come to occupy and to use new territory? One might step on an ant, idly encountered. If they become too intrusive, too troublesome, then one might take means to prevent their incursions. One would not, ordinarily, think too much about them; they were too small, alien, insignificant. Who considered a possible “history” of ants? Or who reflected that ants might have a “prior claim,” as it were, to any place? But if in time ants became more troublesome, then, and only then, would attention take the form of destroying ant-hills — or, ecologically, introducing natural enemies which might do the work of destroying them and allow mankind to go about its own and proper business of plundering and polluting the world man lived in.

  Thus, meanwhile, that of man.

  Some handfuls of them dwelt, drowsy and fatigued, in what had been called the British Isles, when the Kar-chee came. Some, out of curiosity, had investigated … intruded … had been destroyed. Others had moved away. And continued to move, as the Kar-chee and their gargantuan machinery advanced. There was no thought of fighting, of resisting. Man was too few, Kar-chee too many; the invaders too strong, the autochthones too weak, too disorganized and inexperienced. One might hypothesize a situation wherein the children-worlds became aware of Earth’s plight, and had sent help. But the children-worlds were not aware, and after the few first generations had died away, the very memory of such worlds had died away with them.