The Kar-Chee Reign Read online

  Liam, suppressing a sigh, said, “Well, Mother, your arguments are persuasive, and it is perhaps not for me, being rude and unsure, to say that they are not correct. You speak of it being possible to prevent the visitation of the Kar-chee. To me, their non-appearance would be a miracle. But you say that in order for this to happen, all mankind must become virtuous. And, to me, Mother, this would be an even greater miracle.”

  She swept up a pile of tufts of wool with her hand. “My son, it is necessary, then, for you to learn that man can compel the performance of miracles, that it lies within his power to do so; and that, indeed, he must do so, for man is a miraculous creature.”

  • • •

  “Land is near,” Gaspar declared, approaching Liam in his usual majestic fashion, and leaving moderate excitement in his wake. “All things, of course, are comparative: in terms of walking, or, to be more accurate, swimming, land is still very far. But in terms of the distance we have voyaged, land is rather near. Yes, yes,” he said, contentedly, stroking his vast gray beard.

  Liam asked the obvious question.

  “How do we know? We are Knowers. It is our duty to know. But to reply more specifically: buy the observation of the clouds, by the flight of birds, by the scent and direction of the winds, by the nature of drifting wood and weeds, by the color of the sea; and by many other numerous and significant things. We know — as you could, too, if you were one of us. But we will leave that matter for the immediate present. Only for the immediate present, though. By and by we must take it up. We are determined that our stay in this newest land, if it is suitable for habitation, must be of long duration. From which it must follow that we can harbor none among us who are not of our knowledge and our ways. Otherwise the same sorry story of sin, injustice, and iniquity, followed by punishment and Devilish visitation and destruction will repeat itself. We are wearied of it. Yes, Liam, we are wearied of it.”

  With a firm nod of his head he passed on, leaving Liam with much to think about.

  But within a few moments his meditations were interrupted. Gaspar was giving orders. The helm was unlashed and a man stationed on it. The mast was stepped into its socket, and the sails of sewn-matting bent in place to the yards. Oars were gotten ready. So far, evidently, they had ridden with the current (though presumably sail or oars had been needed to get them into it, in the first place) — but they were going to take no chances now, either of the current’s taking them past the land or perhaps wrecking them upon reefs or shoals or shores or shallows.

  All day long they watched, the arkmen abating somewhat their attitude of abstraction, and the raftmen theirs of suspicion … but no land came into sight.

  And that night Rickar and his friends returned again for whispering heresy. Liam hardly felt that he could either encourage or discourage them. He agreed that something better than the present group of choices should exist, but he did not know what that something might be. Pressed, urged that his “experience” demanded him to know more than the Knowers, old or young, at least upon this particular subject, he scowled … paused … said, at last, “We could hardly know less about Kar-chee and dragon than we do. Perhaps if we knew more we could do more … perhaps not….

  “But if we should find them here, or anywhere — or if they should find us — I wonder if we wouldn’t do better — rather than at once fleeing, or at once fighting — oh, I’m sure we would do better — to lie low. Not let ourselves be seen a while, or seen again. And concentrate everything on finding out as much as we can about them … without their finding out anything about us.”

  Rickar said: “Hiding and skulking?”

  “Put a stinking name to it and say it smells bad, if you like. You’re vexed because I won’t offer to lead you in a charge, aren’t you? If I thought it would do more than momentary good, I would. If I ever do, I will. But meanwhile … Knowers? On this subject, let us all become knowers. Father Gaspar’s proverb: ‘Knowledge is power.’ ”

  A sudden, dull glow of light suffused the horizon.

  “Heat lightning,” someone murmured, even as it vanished. It appeared again, twice more. The air seemed to quiver. Then, darkness, and the silent stars.

  Late the next afternoon land appeared — lying upon the rim of the sea like some crouching beast, and, presumably far inland, surmounting the high-massed land, a mountain peak with a long wisp of cloud pendant to it.

  Gaspar had appeared to welcome the suggestion of Liam that he and other raftmen accompany the arkfolk chosen to make an exploratory landing. Perhaps because this way, should anything untoward happen to the makers of the first landfall, the losses to and of his own people would be thereby diminished … or so thought Liam.

  But Gaspar would not allow the ark to put in close until the next day. For the remainder of light time they stood down the coast, making soundings, but finding no bottom anywhere. And toward the last he gave a little sound of satisfaction and pointed toward a line of white or yellow in between the dark water and the darker land.

  “Beach-coast, you see. Just the place for a small boat to put ashore — ” He was interrupted by a shout. Bottom had been found at last. “Good, then. We’ll anchor and ride here tonight.”

  It was cold and the stars were just beginning to pale when Liam, Rickar, an older Knower named Lej who was the uncle of Fateem, and the raftsman Skai descended into the small craft, hoisted a small triangular sail, and let the wind take them in. Day crept out, the sun leaped up, something moved upon the beach, and presently they saw it dissolve into three things … three men. Warily they checked their weapons. The three men were soon seen to be three very young men, two of them evidently brothers. Surprise and suspicion jousted for place on their faces; Liam felt he knew exactly how they must feel.

  Lej was the first to speak. “War is not our wish,” he said. He took a tiny pouch of flour, emptied it into his hand, tossed it north … south … east … west. “Peace and plenty to the four quarters of your land. May the blessings of Nature be made manifest upon them and upon you and upon yours.”

  The three young men looked uncertain, perhaps regretting a ritual of welcome which they didn’t have. Then, after exchanging glances, they stowed their bows and stepped into the water and helped beach the canoe. The older brother said, “All men are welcome here now, I think….”

  They looked around them with something close to fright, and they lifted their heads and sniffed the air. Some of the near-fear seemed to ebb. And the younger brother said, “There are dragons hereabouts….”

  V

  REN ROWAN now seemed old enough to be the father of the man he had been but a few days before. The homesite already had a slovenly and half-abandoned air to it. He gazed at the newcomers blankly at first, squinted and gaped at his sons, frowned as he observed the signs of decay quickening about his yard and house. Then he said, after several starts and stops and with idiot soundings and smackings of tongue and palate and throat, “So…. Came here to die…. Could have died at home….” Then he looked at them with the dull, sick look with which a man painfully and irrevocably ill may reproach those who do not share his pain.

  Lej’s answer was brisk. “Everyone has to die, but no one has to die just yet. This man here, he with the strange eyes, he and men and women from his country, were found by us at sea on a raft. They had despaired to do other than die, but they are, as you may see, alive and well nonetheless.”

  Liam listened with wry appreciation, noting how Lej said nothing of the raft people who were not now “alive and well nonetheless.” He noted with some surprise that this seemed to be a different Lej. Aboard the ark he had apparently been in some sort of suspended animation, with nothing to do except perform his duties and listen to old Father Gaspar. Now the mantle of Gaspar, the principal knower, seemed to have devolved upon him by proxy and by right of senior age. This was not now the obedient subordinate speaking; it was the true believer, preaching to the ignorant.

  “Needn’t die just yet….” Old Ren repeated the word
s. A very faint flicker passed over his face. It was not hope — not yet — it may have been only disagreement. But it indicated the return of some emotion other than lethargy and absolute resignation. Lors looked from Lej, smooth, utterly confident, to his father, so suddenly and prematurely bereft of hope and strength and even manhood. He did not know what Lej was about to say, but he felt at that moment that if it would restore his father to the man he had been, then, whatever it was, he, Lors, would follow and obey.

  “There can be no right action without right knowledge,” Lej went on. “I see this house building, these outbuildings, these fields and groves and cattle and stock; and I observe that they do not pertain to savages nor to barbarians, nor to men who live like brutals with no inkling of the social complex. I see here a settlement of civilized people, of people who possess knowledge and the ability to know more.”

  He paused to let this sink in, and turned his head to look at the others, some of whom had already begun to look up from every conceivable moribund posture. His eye seemed to draw them up, draw them out and away from the all-consuming terror which had blunted the senses. The wind blew sweet from the grasslands and woods and a bird sounded its territorial note, liquid and prideful. The trees rustled and shook a powdery shower of tiny blossoms down upon them where they lay or crouched and slumped. Already, merely by the intrusion of the stranger with his strange words, they had suddenly become aware of many things which had been forgotten.

  “But I see here, too,” Lej went on, “a community which does not yet know enough … one whose knowledge has not been sufficient to save it from nearly dying of fright. Friends! Listen to me! I have very important things to say to you! Only men themselves, and women, are capable of totally arbitrary and capricious actions. But Manifest Nature is not. Manifest Nature does nothing without a cause, nothing without a purpose. The fearsome demons who have, I am told, now appeared among you, have been sent here by Nature for a purpose, and that purpose is not to destroy you, utterly. Is not!

  “Only if you are foolish and sinful enough to resist is destruction certain. But if you will examine your inner selves, admit that you have done wrongfully, if you resolve to learn from the Knowers how to avoid future transgression, and if you are determined, friends, not only to learn what to do but to do it! — then salvation is possible. If you wish to learn, we will teach you. If you, having learned, having come to know and having joined the community of the Knowers, then take the next inevitable and logical step — that of leaving the land tainted by former transgressions — ”

  Old Ren groaned. He struck his head with his hands.

  “Leave? What for? So that the Devil can follow us? If we’re to be killed, then let’s be killed here…. Here! Where we were all born and where we’ve all lived….”

  Lej almost smiled at him. “But, old sir and friend, that’s what we’ve come to show you: that you need not any of you be killed. Not here and not anywhere. Animals kill because they are hungry. So do sharks. But Devils are not animals, they are Devils! In their actions toward mankind the creatures of Devilkind aren’t moved by necessity of hunger. If your children do wrong, you cut a switch and you punish them. The switch is not moved by any intelligence or force of its own. The switch is moved by you! You are the one perceiving the necessity of punishment, but the switch itself perceives nothing. The child fears the switch itself only if he lacks the wit to understand that he should rather fear his father’s arm … but it takes only a little while for him to realize that if he will not misbehave he will not be punished!

  “Are you beginning to see? The Double Devils are merely the implements by which we, children of Manifest Nature, are being punished. They have no mind of their own, you know. All we need do to avoid them is to cease deserving them. And if you should ask, in that case why need we build the vessels which the Knowers call arks and why should we prepare food and drink and timber and seeds and stocks of goods and select the best of our beasts and why need we venture into exile upon these arks? — why will it not suffice if we repent and begin to follow a proper course of actions right here where we already are? — ”

  He had either made this same address often before, Liam considered, watching Lej’s very ordinary face suffused with a confidence which seemed to lift him above self, or else he had heard it so often before that he had soaked it up and was now disgorging it word for word and point by point.

  “If this is what you’re about to ask, friends, then you needn’t wait long for the answer. The exile is itself a necessary form of the punishment. Do you see it now? Of course you do. It’s so very simple isn’t it? This land has been tainted. The appearance of the Devils proves that — if it weren’t tainted they wouldn’t be here. The land is seeped and soaked in sin; it’s running over with it. You can’t stay here; you couldn’t follow a course of genuine knowledge and proper conduct here; you must leave it and venture out upon the cleansing sea and reflect and ponder and — ”

  His words went on and on and on. He had an answer for everything. The Kar-chee weren’t everywhere at once; neither were the dragons. They did not move with the speed of the wind, they moved, indeed, rather slowly in their work of purifying the land from sin. It was only necessary to keep out of their way as they went about their pre-ordained and essential tasks. If they came near, then move far. And, meanwhile, let trees be selected for felling if seasoned timber enough was not available: there would be time. Oh, yes, there would be time. Haste makes waste. Knowledge is power. Meanwhile, the very palisade of the homesite itself was useful timber, and there were the beams of the houses, too. The Knowers knew how. The Knowers knew why. And when. The Knowers, in short, knew.

  Skai, a pale-faced and scant-bearded man, standing next to Liam, said, “Makes sense. Makes sense. Wouldn’t you say, Liam?”

  Liam said, “It makes sense of a sort. But there’s more than one sort of sense … wouldn’t you say, Skai?”

  The man blinked, mumbled wordlessly. After a while, Liam noticed, he wasn’t standing next to him any longer. He was up front, crowding close, listening to Lej. And nodding … nodding … nodding.

  • • •

  A sheltered and concealed cove was found for the ark, and Gaspar directed her putting in to there. The vessel was warped in quite close to shore, the depth of the water there permitting it; and then Gaspar, in whom common sense was never totally obscured by either verbiage or dogma, directed that leafy branches be cut and placed over the topside of the vessel. More: he had them changed daily, as soon as they began to wilt. Perhaps he might have preferred not to tarry at all, but there were many things inducing him to stay a while. So he carefully camouflaged his vessel and began to see to those things.

  Shelters were set up ashore for the ill, both of the ark-and the raft-group. (Work of proselytizing among the latter proceeded apace, a captive audience being in Gaspar’s view the best audience of all.) The ark itself was overhauled, repaired, refurbished. A part of the livestock was taken ashore, turn and turn about, to be grazed. Meat was killed and fish caught and both salted, dried, smoked — but a portion of kill and catch consumed as part of the daily rations. Ebbing supplies were renewed. The disrupted state of local society had almost destroyed the opportunity for regular trade, but the Knowers managed to procure what they wanted nevertheless.

  And all the while they preached their message — vigorously, urgently, persuasively, incessantly.

  And not without success.

  Yet, curiously — and whether old Knower Gaspar noticed or not, it seemed to make no difference to him — his campaign seemed to be a two-edged blade. On the one hand, he drew many to him. On the other hand, he pushed many away. Some there were who had been willing to lie down and die who now arose and with all vigor engaged in scrutinizing their past deeds and prepared to repent and to migrate. Others there were who had been in the same comatose condition who now recovered and rejected not only their previous condition but the doctrinal preaching which had aroused them from it.

 
“What does he mean, Devils are only a switch to beat us?” demanded Jow. “Did anyone ever see a switch move around by itself? These Knowers — how many places have they moved to? So many, most of them don’t know, themselves. They ever convert any place — really convert it — so good that it stayed converted, so that no Devils ever came there? It’s plain that they didn’t.”

  Jow, apparently, was going to be a hard nut to crack. If, indeed, he cracked at all.

  Some of the raft-people, minds still afire with reflected memory of the destruction wrought in New North Britland, wanted nothing but to keep as far away from Kar-chee and dragon as they could. They took it for granted that Liam, having led them in on migration to safety, would certainly not stay behind after the next one. Others had second thoughts. Devils had been defeated once back in the old home land in the northern seas. Chop it and change it as one would, that fact remained. Which was reducible to a very simple formula: The Devils could be defeated. Liam, to these, was not a man who had fled from the folly of further resistance; he was the very leader of resistance, his wisdom being only further enhanced by having realized — concerning a second stand to fight back there and then — that the time had not yet been right. Liam, to these, was only waiting for the time to become ripe and right. This might be after the next migration; on the other hand, it might come right here — in which case, of course, there would be no migration … at least not for them. Let the proud-nosed old Knowers move where they pleased.