The Kar-Chee Reign Page 6

  Liam blinked and gaped. He put out his hand and Gaspar politely raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

  “ ‘Evil and destructive’ means what?”

  “You have not listened carefully. However, I make allowances for the several circumstances of, firstly, you grew up in a benighted outland and not in a community of Knowers; secondly, you have suffered physically and mentally from your ill-managed venture upon the raft; thirdly, I do not wish to dwell upon it and perhaps hurt your feelings, but I must testify to what I see and in this case I see that you suffer from a physical malady: to wit, your eyes do not match, and from this it follows that — ”

  Liam, trying intensely hard to recall the Father Knower’s exact words and stem the flood of rhetoric, said, rather loudly, “ ‘Destructive parasites.’ ”

  And Gaspar immediately said, “Kar-chee.”

  He was about to say more but a young woman of the stranger people, lighthaired and not ill-favored, rose from where she was sitting and stroking a small gray lamb, and said, “Liam!”

  Her friend began to smile, then made an abrupt, impatient gesture, and she started to back away. He grasped her hand and drew her along, saying, “Father, your pardon, but — ”

  “Granted. Young person, your name has not been made known to me.”

  “Cerry … Cerry, I’m called.”

  “Have all your wants been made known to the Mother?”

  “Yes…. She’s been very kind.”

  “ ‘Kind,’ a word of insufficient exactitude. The Mother knows her work; if you have made known your wants to her they will by now have been supplied if it is proper and convenient for them to be so. Has she informed you on the subject of cohabitation? You flush. How becoming and proper. So be it. Accompany us on our conversational circuit of the ark if you wish, but feel no compulsion, and on no account interrupt us further or again.”

  So on they went, past the sheep-pens freshly littered with sawdust, past the woman plying distaff and spindle, past the sick-bay where some of the raft-people still lay, down to the close-packed but neatly arranged living-quarters — hammocks lashed and stowed; bachelors’ section here, single women there, nursery, married couples’ quarters; supplies: food, seed, tools, cloth, yarn, hides, salt, spices, water. Father Gaspar checked everything, inspected the rude but serviceable pumps, peered into each of the tripart hulls — and talked … talked … talked….

  After a long, long time he informed them that it was his period for rest, and politely dismissed them.

  Back up on deck, in a niche which, as no one else seemed to have claimed it, they made their own, Liam looked at Cerry. And she at him. After a moment, he asked, “And what, exactly, did the Mother inform you about cohabitation?”

  She half-smiled, half-scowled. “Oh … since no one knows for sure how long we’ll be at sea, and since pregnancy and childbirth would be inconvenient for the duration of the voyage, all cohabitation has to be, well, ‘qualified’ was her word for it. I can go into details if you’d really like.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, moodily.

  “I haven’t forced you or distrained you. I don’t now.”

  She blew out her lips. “Thank you, brave one. I understand that I am free to take my sheepskin elsewhere for qualified cohabitation….” With a quick expression of her face she showed what she thought of that, and with a quick glance of her eye and pressure of her hand on his she showed what she still thought of Liam. Then, “Well, the Mother is not a bad old one, considering that she’s been the sole wife of old Father Know-it-all for thirty years. Tell me, Liam: are they all quite mad? Or just him?”

  He said, “I suppose it’s a sort of qualified madness, one may say. Don’t laugh, lewd woman…. I don’t know for sure what to think of it all. Except that I think for sure that I am glad this vessel, ark, as they call it, was there when we were there … wherever we were…. If we just had a map … Well. Every man hath his own madness. A saying from our own wise ancients….”

  He ruffled her light hair. The ark women had been obliged to cut it short, so tangled had it been. “This is no single, simple thread we have to follow; this you know, Cerry, don’t you? It goes weaving in and weaving out, it leads through the fire and the sea and storm, it’s full of knots, but the knots are proper parts of it. The Knowers are one knot. We’ll unravel it yet. And we will be sure of finding use for the slack as well. I’m sure of that.”

  • • •

  He was sure of little else but that. The ark folk were kind enough — “imprecise” though their captain-priest-father might find the term; they went about their duties with efficiency. If Liam were pressed to name a particular impression received from them, he might have inverted the reply by saying that he was most impressed by a lack of any strong impression. Listless was by far too strong a term. Browbeaten was equally untrue — Gaspar, the Father Knower, might perhaps have simply overwhelmed them all by his ceaseless flow of wordage. Chiefly he felt the lack of any stronger personality, single or collective. And if there were more to it than that, then he did not know.

  The vessel was both the largest and the oddest he had ever seen. It had stepping for a mast — and, indeed, several mast sections as well as huge rolls of matting doubtless intended for sail were all clearly visible on deck — yet the mast was not stepped and the breeze did no more than cool the air … cunningly diverted belowdecks by screens set for the purpose at the lad-derheads. Also, thole-pins were in place and sweeps of a size for them all neatly arranged; yet no oar was set up; only the tiller oar, and that was lashed fixed. Still, the ark did move; it moved — as Liam observed, having for that purpose tossed a chip overboard — at a good pace. It seemed, then, that the ark had gotten into an ocean current, a mer-stream, and that old Gaspar knew enough about it to be quite confident as to where it was taking him, and at what speed, and for how long. Whence it was a reasonable assumption that eventually the mast would go up and the sails; too; and then, though not necessarily at once, the oars.

  Liam had a strong sentiment that, in some things at least, Father Gaspar was, indeed, and literally, a Knower.

  The sea had long since come to seem to him the natural element; memories of the land behind receded; the land (or lands) before remained as yet but unformed hopes. He watched the sun plunge into the sea, a descent so much more swift than the long, slow sunsets of his lost northern homeland. The luminous washings of the night waves seemed now merely proper and familiar and no more, no longer sinister. Something was happening to the forms of the star-clusters; he wished now with all his heart that he had taken thought to make a map of the constellations long before now; but it was not too late … he could ask the Father Knower for sketching materials tomorrow; if they were refused (or, a likelier negative, smoothly and reasonably declined), he would manage to improvise them somehow.

  His mind was filled with this as he sat on deck with Cerry, beneath a sort of high chair in which sat a young man who had the lookout watch. And presently they became aware that someone else had joined them. He thought at first it was probably one of his own, the raft people — although with that thought came another; were they still “his own people”? and how many, if any? and which ones? — but before the faint star-gleam and almost equally faint sea-gleam could reveal the lineaments of the face, the accents of the low, soft voice told him it was one of the ark’s people.

  “You don’t know … you didn’t, ever, know Serra?”

  “I’m sure I never heard of her. Or — him?”

  The young man laughed, softly, shyly. The laugh ended abruptly. Someone else had joined them. After a moment: “No … oh … Serra is the place where we used to live.” The name still meant nothing to Liam. But he now knew that the conversation was a clandestine one, that the speaker had for a moment been concerned about the identity of the last arrival, but was now content about it.

  “In which direction did Serra lie? And what sort of a place was it?”


  A hand was waved vaguely. “Back that way…. It used to be a part of — do you know the old names? — of Africa. But we aren’t of the old Serran stock. Before, although I don’t remember it, we lived in Sori. And before that, we used to live in Jari. Adn before that — But it doesn’t matter. My name is Rickar.”

  Even softer, from the other: “And mine is Fateem.” It was a girl’s voice.

  There was a curious silence.

  Rickar, launching his speech upon a sigh, began to tell them of life in Serra; the rich, intensely-cultivated soil, the games played, the songs sung, the names of the towns and what each was specially noted for — this one for the friendliness of its women, that one for the strength of its men, another for commercial cunning, a fourth for cloth of good weave, a fifth for its famous view…. His voice died away upon another sigh.

  “And which one,” asked Cerry, “were you from?”

  Rickar made an abrupt sound in his throat. “We weren’t from any of them, really. We kept apart. We were the Knowers. We worked, traded, studied … but all the while, you know, all the while, we waited.”

  “Waited for what, Rickar?”

  “For the sinning to start. For the punishment to follow. For the time to come for us to leave and move on again. You must know about all that. You were with my father so long this afternoon. I know he was the same man this afternoon as he was this morning, so I am sure that he must have explained it all to you.”

  Neither Liam nor Cerry denied it. They said nothing. Rickar nevertheless began to repeat what he knew that they knew, and they suffered him to do so. It was like looking through another window; the sight was the same, but the angle was different — if some details were lost to sight, others were thus revealed.

  And another crept up through the gentle darkness, and another, and another.

  “… then the village headman stole some of the tax-goods, and my father and the elders and elderesses shook their heads …

  “… but her second husband sold her property and spent it on other women, and when my mother heard of this she said …

  “… it was said that the bridge was almost a hundred years old and a wonder it had stood up so long, but when it collapsed …

  “… so we began to assemble the ark again and get things to be ready, and, really, that was many years ago, and all those many years the people — the other people — laughed at us. But my father said it was useless to warn them. Well … it’s true. The Kar-chee Devils and their dragons did come, they were sighted at the western end of Serra, and the whole place began to boil like an ant-hill. You never saw such preparations for war!”

  Liam said, even more softly than Rickar, “Perhaps I have….”

  Abruptly, Fateem spoke, her voice quite young and very sweet in tone. “You attacked and defeated them, didn’t you? You really did! You really did!”

  “Ah, well, no as well as yes,” Liam began. But there was a stir in the darkness, and those there had no mind for equivocations or even for explanations.

  Yes, he had attacked the Kar-chee Devils! Some of the other raftsmen had told about it. (The tale, quite clearly, had grown great in the telling.) He had defeated the Kar-chee Devils! And the stinking dragon Devils! Shot monstrous stones and monstrous arrows at them with tremendous engines! Left their encampments burning and smoking! And then —

  (And here he thought they were all about to overwhelm him and smother him with their youthful eagerness and touch him for a touch of potent luck as though he were a mage-tree or a sage-stone.)

  — And then he and his men and his women had, in more zeal than cunning, set off in the raft to bring the news to other peoples that the Devils could be defeated!

  “That they are only beasts of flesh and blood,” Fateem declared, her slight voice trembling. “You did! You did!”

  It seemed almost as though she defied him to deny it. And he did not quite accept the challenge. “There is a time for telling and a time for dwelling,” he said, evasively. “Not every new thing heard is true and not every old thing heard is false. I think it would be best for you to please me by speaking no more of this matter for now. We are guests and strangers aboard your craft. Do you understand? Then go, as you favor me, go one by one and quietly to your places and to sleep….”

  • • •

  Long, long they sat there, after the young arkfolk had gone. They watched the sea and they watched the sky and after a while they saw a piece of a star come melting down and by this sign they knew that great matters were a-wing; but they did not yet know what.

  Liam said, “I think we’ll sleep ourselves now. First I’ll go slumber with my gray eye open and my brown one shut, and then I’ll change about. I don’t think that anyone aboard will try to slip up and wrong me, but I am not utterly convinced of it.”

  Later, as they lay between the sheepskins, Cerry heard him murmur, “There never was a religion lasted even two days yet without a day-old heresy….”

  • • •

  The Mother Knower — Gaspar’s wife and Rickar’s mother — was a tall, stooped, flat-chested woman, with large sunken eyes. Some whisper, some rumor, of the prior night’s clandestine gathering must have reached her ears, for late the following morning she betook herself from her duties and came to ask Liam if he could be of help in sorting wool. Certainly there must have been among the arkfolk others whom she knew to be of use in this; equally certainly he would not refuse … so his thoughts ran. He was feeling, it seemed to him, stronger by every hour.

  “This is not our kind of wool,” he commented, fingering the pile, dirty-gray-black on the surface of each fleece, and underneath ranging from pure black to creamy-fawn to pure white. “But it smells much the same.”

  Mother Nor smiled faintly. “I never minded that,” she said. “It is a healthy smell. Of course, wool was not much suited to the climate of Serra — or, for that matter, Sori or Jari. The sheep came with us from Amhar, our first home. Perhaps someday we will live in a cooler place; then we will see fulfilled the counsel of our wise ancients, always to bring the sheep with us.”

  His hands picked and pulled and placed, the familiar feel and scent of lanolin bringing memories before his inner eyes.

  “Had they good sheep, in your own home land?” she asked, softly.

  “Yes … good sheep…. Good men, too.”

  She sighed, shook her head. “But not good enough. They sinned greatly, or else the punishment of the Double Devils would not have been visited upon them … don’t you see?”

  Liam thought he would change the subject. “Do you think eventually to find your way north once more, to a cooler climate?”

  The sunken, gentle eyes looked at him with mild surprise. “It may be so. We do not know. But it would not be necessary to go north in order to find the climate cooler, for it will become so eventually if one ventures far enough south. Didn’t you know that?”

  He shook his head, perplexed. “I had always been told that it grew always hotter as one proceeds south, until eventually no one can live because of the intense heat of the Southern Hell. I wasn’t sure that I believed in the Southern Hell — or, for that matter, in the Northern one. Still … there must be something up in that frozen place, because we did see the lights. Have you ever seen them? They shone not long before I left … as though a great bowl of shimmering green had descended upon the night sky. So … it seemed reasonable that if there was a Northern Hell that there should be a Southern one, too. But I was never sure.”

  Now it was her turn for head-shaking. “No,” she said. “Oh, no … there is no such thing as a Southern Hell. It grows hotter only up to a point, and afterward it commences to grow cool. As for these so-called lights, they are probably a delusion. A delusion,” she said, firmly, “like the delusion that the visitations of outraged nature can or should be resisted.”

  He gave up trying to change the subject. Let her have her say and say it out; everyone else was doing so. “The Kar-chee, you mean. And the dragons.”

&nbs
p; She meant. Yes. The Double Devils. Could it really be that his own landsmen, not content with bringing this punishment upon themselves by sins and breaches of judgment and neglect of proper ways, had actually been so blasphemous as to resist? To attack? He assured her that they had, indeed. She was truly, genuinely shocked. “And what happened afterward, Liam? Wasn’t there greater destruction than before? Surely there was! And did that not prove it? Was this not evident, obvious proof of the — not merely futility, but the absolute wrongness of resisting the Double Devils?”

  “But … Mother Nor … what would you have people do? Submit, supinely, and see their land destroyed?”

  She took his hands in hers. “Young Liam, can they, by resisting, prevent their lands from being destroyed? The destruction of the land, like the appearance of the Kar-chee and the dragon, is an act of Manifest Nature. Man can no more hope to resist it successfully than he can hope to subdue the waves with a broom, or bring down the stars with a noose. Salvation does not lie in resistance. Salvation lies in compliance! Man is but clay in Nature’s hands. A course of action has been outlined for him and it is for him to follow that course. Proper action, correct deeds, the application of justice and equity: these will bring safety; these alone.

  “What should the people of your home land have done when the Double Devils appeared? They should have built an ark and departed in search of a place to settle in — ”

  He broke in, “And waited there, passively, until the next visitation?”

  But (she protested) if they would only be virtuous, obedient, diligent in the pursuit of proper conduct, then there would be no “next visitation”!

  “Not ‘passively,’ no. Activity — but active in the correct way. Have you never thought to wonder why the Double Devils exist at all? Surely you know that nothing happens without a cause, and that no cause exists without a purpose? I’m told that your people believe that the Kar-chee come from the stars. This is mere superstition. No — this is rank superstition! The stars are made of purest fire and nothing comes from them but burning embers … sometimes we see them streak, flaming across the sky at night; sometimes we find the burnt-out coals upon the ground. But no living thing comes from the stars because no living thing can live in the stars. Why? Because the stars are fire and living things cannot live in fire.” Her voice was earnest and sincere and she looked at him to see if he understood.