The Kar-Chee Reign Page 9

  One said, “Hey, people!”

  One said, “Where do you go, people?”

  One said, “Only maybe not, eh, people?”

  They straggled to a halt, irresolute. Tom and Lors, in turn, identified themselves, and began an explanation of their purpose. But presently they stopped. The three men were not listening to them, were not looking at them. They were looking at Liam. Intently.

  One said, “Hey, person, your eyes don’t match!”

  One said, “You’ve got power of a sort, person?”

  One said, “Only maybe not, eh, person?”

  Liam said nothing. He returned their looks. By and by the long silence was broken again as the men touched their breasts in the identification which was, evidently, among them a form of greeting.

  “This is Lehi.”

  “This is Nephi.”

  “This is Moroni.”

  And again there was a silence. Then Liam said, “It’s been told you what is wanted of you. You are not obliged to agree. You may answer Yes, you may answer No, you may answer Maybe. But, persons, before the sun is warm enough and the air is dry enough for you to have safely restrung your bows, persons, you will have answered.” And he touched his breast and said, “This is Liam.”

  And he was correct. They thought him perhaps the only sane man among madmen — but only perhaps — but they were willing to provide the live guanacos … for a consideration. For what consideration? That, it was stated clearly, would have to await further thought.

  “Three men alone cannot catch the wild ones alive, person. Many men will be needed to catch the wild ones alive. Some to creep up on them … slowly … slowly … so … dressed in the skins of the wild ones. They will be suspicious at first” — Lehi mimed how the wild guanaco would lift up his head and look dubiously at the odd “guanacos” so slowly “grazing” and advancing — “but by and by and little by little, they get used to it. They forget.”

  “Only maybe not,” said Moroni.

  “They never get completely used to us, they never completely forget their suspicions of us,” Nephi conceded. “To hunt them to the death is difficult, yet we must do it, for such is their fate and such, for that matter, is ours.”

  And then the three of them, with words, with gestures, mime, and dance, enacted for them the rest of the hunt of the wild guanaco: concealment and disguise, gradual approach from all sides, the off-throwing of disguise by one group, the blowing of the horns, the swift flight of the alarmed animals, the rising up of another group waving flags, the wheeling and turning and the fleetly flying yet again of the wild ones until, their sides turned most advantageously to the hidden archers lying low, they were at length shot to death.

  “We do not slay them all, hey, person,” said Lehi.

  “We spare the colts and the mares, eh, person,” said Nephi.

  And Moroni said, “Only maybe not.”

  The other two conceded that such conservation represented the ideal, but not, invariably, the actual practice. “But capturing the wild ones alive, hey, this is something else. We must build corrals, eh, and station many men with horns and banners. But we will do it, persons; tell us how many you want, and we will supply them, every one of them.”

  “Send us someone in a week’s time to tell us the news you have to tell,” Liam said. “Meanwhile, what do you intend to do about the Kar-chee and about the dragons?”

  They shrugged. They mimed the stooping gait of the Kar-chee, the dragon on four feet, and the dragon on two. They would deal with them as they dealt with the wild guanaco: hunt them — confuse them — destroy them. So. That was what they would do. Moroni as usual had the last word. “Only maybe not,” he said.

  One last question they had for Liam as he and his friends prepared to go. “You are not of this island-place, person. How did you get here?”

  “I came on a raft with others,” he said.

  The sun’s rays came slanting through the clouds, and the hunters looked slantingly at each other. “Persons have ventured far on rafts before,” one said. “And perhaps will venture far again,” said another. And the third said, “There is no end; there are only beginnings.”

  They strung their bows and hefted their spears and strode away across the moor and rolling hills, upward, upward, and up. Mists closed in, parted, rallied a last time, were burned off by the sun. And when Liam last looked back there was no one in sight.

  Long, long, on the long downward way, with Fateem silent but serene by his side, he considered. What was his duty toward these hunters, for example? For even if their wild, free life on the open heights were doomed, surely they themselves need not be? That is, unless the whole house of mankind need be…. That is, unless their own stubborn intransigence might turn their fate to need be. What was his, Liam’s, own duty toward them?

  Toward those who had followed him from Britland on the terrible raft?

  Toward those who followed the Knowers?

  Toward Lors and Tom and their fellow-islanders?

  Toward Cerry, who followed him and asked for nothing and had received little more? Toward Fateem, who had asked for that which he had determined not to give … and yet had, like any other man, gladly in the moment given?

  And — for that matter — toward himself?

  The moors gave way to farmlands, fields, forests, thickets, rocks, and sand; and all the time his thoughts roamed and prowled and always they came out the same door they had come in.

  His duty was to learn all that he could learn and by whatever means and at whatever risks about the Kar-chee and about the dragons.

  • • •

  Duro felt his responsibilities so keenly and weightily that it abated his pleasure in being more-or-less in charge of two older people. He was also unable to forget what had happened the last time he had come down to the caves. The recollection was like a heavy hand upon his stones. He and Lors had agreed to rendezvous as far away from that particular part of the region as possible, but … still …

  “We have some caves in our part of Britland,” Cerry said, as she looked about, awed, “but they are not so regular as these. It looks — of course, that would be impossible — but it does look as though they had been dug here! Right through the solid rock….”

  Rickar smiled at the absurdity of the suggestion, but Duro nodded his head. “They say that it was so. They say that in the oldest days there were, the days before the old days, that these hills were full of metal” — he spoke the word with awe — “and that the men who were alive then dug these caves with tools of metal to get out the metal that was here.

  “And I’ve heard Popa say that when the great land that was before the Devils came split up and parts of it sank, you know — that the whole fore-part of this region was split away and sank, too, and this is what was left after that.”

  They lifted torches and peered about them, silent and reverent and almost overwhelmed. Here the walls were far apart and the ceilings high; there, everything narrowed and closed in upon itself. For a long while the passage ran straight as the path of a well-made arrow, then it curved with measured symmetry; now it was level, now it rose up, now it sank. Strange markings were found in the rock from time to time. And once they came upon a place where water dripped from a cleft in the wall and formed a stream which found its way into a deep pool which reflected the light of their torches.

  Cerry shivered. In the low voice which had become natural to the three of them, awed by the initial echoes, she said, “I’d be afraid to be here without light…. The truth is, I’m afraid to be here, even now — ”

  “We’ll go back,” Duro said.

  They set up their meager camp in a chamber he showed them, off a short side passage; it was entered from below, and they closed the way up, once they had ascended, by pushing over a shard of broken rock; but not so completely that air couldn’t enter. Then he set up his lamp, a clever and curious thing whereby oil trickled slowly through a series of pierced egg-shells, replenishing the bowl as the
small wick consumed the fuel. The light flickered for a few moments, dancing wildly, then it settled down and commenced to burn steadily, if a trifle smokily. They ate lightly, conversed a while in the tones now dared to be raised a trifle louder. Presently the older two became aware that Duro had dropped off to sleep. They laughed, then yawned, then did the same.

  And in the night-time, Cerry wept.

  Rickar awoke to hear her sobbing. “Are you ill?” he asked, raising himself on an elbow. “Have you a pain?” She shook her head, her face concealed in her hands. “Then what’s wrong?”

  But all she would say was, “Liam! Liam!”

  And after a while she fell silent and turned her back. So Rickar sighed and blinked his eyes and then Duro was jogging him and beckoning him to follow. Daylight filtered in, dimly, below. He followed him, wondering, waiting for the boy to speak, but all he did was stop and face against a wall. “Well?” Rickar asked, after a moment. “What’s the matter?”

  “Matter?” Duro asked, over his shoulder. “Don’t you Knowers have bladders, too?”

  “Oh,” Rickar said, blankly. A mildly insistent internal pressure supplied the answer. “Yes,” he said, “we do. Uh … yes … thanks.”

  “No fee to guests. Sleep well?”

  “I did, yes. Except when Cerry woke me up. She was crying. You didn’t hear her? I thought not. Wouldn’t say what was wrong.”

  Duro adjusted his breech-clout. “Well,” he said, cheerfully, “that was your opportunity. You should have blown out the lamp and taken her into your arms and kissed away her fears. Oh well. Crying, hmm. Too bad. Probably had a bad dream. You all finished? Then let’s get back before she wakes up and gets scared all over again.” He started back, nodding his head sagely. “No accounting for dreams, you know. No accounting for them.”

  • • •

  In after ages there came to be much marvel at the technology of the Kar-chee. But there could never have been much marvel at their technology of what an earlier age would have called “security” — except, perhaps, to marvel at the almost complete absence of it. Yet this was not without reasonable cause. Just as there are organisms who cannot digest anything which has not been already partly pre-digested by decay, so the Kar-chee’s social-scientific organism could digest no planet which had not been already partly pre-digested by decay. Hence they picked none for their attention which had not already been either abandoned or as close to it as made no matter of difference. In such cases there was little or no capacity for resistance by the few remaining inhabitants. A man, in the days when men had still been scanty upon the surface of their own mother-world and still exploring newly found portions of it, might have been clawed by a bear or nipped by an owl, but he did not think that the owls or the bears were resisting. And no matter how many such accidents or incidents occurred, it still never came into the mind of man to establish a system of “security” against owls or bears.

  It was the notion of Lors and of Liam to pick their way cautiously through the honeycomb of caves and come out high up on the other side, where they might be able to peer down, seeing without being seen; and even, perhaps, at night, creep down with infinite caution and spy about the outskirts of the enemy camp. What happened was rather different, of course.

  • • •

  None of them had ever had personal experience of any engine or device more complex than a loom or a wine- or oil-press. The meaning of what lay far below them there on the floor of the vast cavern was thus largely hidden from them. An infinity of lights, a multitude of great black cabinets (so they thought of them), a profusion of moving parts, odd noises, hummings, buzzings, shrill-high batlike squeakings, rumblings … sounds for which they had no names. Kar-chee came and went, bound on tasks which — concerned as they must have been with the machinery — were meaningless to the unobserved observers. There were no dragons immediately below, but at the opposite end of the cavern, a good distance off, there were a number of them, milling slowly about.

  To Cerry, what was going on below made no more sense when she last looked at it than when she first looked at it. Except for the presence of the Devils, it simply was not something to be comprehended. But with Liam it was otherwise. His eyes roamed slowly and systematically over the entire area, back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down. Again and again. Again and again. And so, gradually, line upon line, principle upon principle, here a little and there a little, something of what was going on below began to fall into a sort of a sequence and to make a sort of a sense to him.

  There was a continual flashing of blue points, a rushing of waters, crashing percussions, dust, a flow of crushed rocks in moving paths, Kar-chee bending and stooping and rising, the air shuddering, the solid stone shuddering.

  But, now, as he looked and looked, he began to believe that although all this was going on simultaneously, all the these which made up the this were going on separately. He perceived repetitions, from the repetitions he perceived sequences, and from the sequences he derived causes and effects. As yet he could not in any manner understand purpose. But that might yet come. It might yet. He inched forward yet another little bit, and stared intently, trying to isolate a sequence and follow it through from start to stop.

  A great serpent of metal mesh and joints reared itself up, extending and extending, stretching and stretching, rigid where it had been flaccid, its head all monstrous gears and metal beak. At a height higher than that of ten men standing on each other’s shoulders, the head struck. Plates fell into place, protecting the gears as the beak imbedded itself in the rock. And bit. And burrowed. The head vanished; the “neck” stretched and extended. Dust and new-made sand, like dry dribble, came from the orifice. The head withdrew. The plates opened. The monstrous beak sank down … down…. The body withdrew into itself, turning, serpentine, retreating across the floor of the cavern. And at length it paused by a Kar-chee and, in a movement which made Liam, watching, shudder, so closely did it counterfeit life and affection, it raised its head to the Kar-chee and the Kar-chee lowered a monstrous arm and laid its hand upon the monstrous head.

  But this curious simulation lasted but a second. The Kar-chee hands contained implements, which removed the beak-drill and placed it in a container; then the Kar-chee hands dipped into another place, came out with one of the curious objects Liam had come to think of as points, and —

  But then, far down the immense cavern, a section of wall slid away, revealing an immense corridor leading off into obscurity and fitfully illuminated with reddish light like the reflection of enormous fires, and from this emerged a blast of heat which made the humans fight for breath. Out and up from this inferno crawled a long and armored Something on many clanking feet; mud and water dripped from it. Behind it, very far behind it, a door slid shut. And before that, another. And another. Another….

  It was as though there lay something very strong and dangerous far below there, which had to be caged and fenced and walled away….

  The Kar-chee, all of them, looked up and paused in their doings and walkings and watchings. Farther away, the dragons did the same, lifting their heads up and some even rearing on their hind legs. All turned, all regarded. Something of greatmost importance seemed imminent.

  But what this might be, Liam could not know. He could suspect, however, and his suspicion turned his courage into terror. But not for long. The greater and nearer the danger, the sooner and more effectively the quest for knowledge must be accomplished. He returned his intent gaze to the glittering and flashing blues … his eye and his attention had been caught by them at the first. In terms of language with which he was not familiar it could perhaps have been said that his subconscious mind had made an important discovery which his conscious mind had yet to make. Liam did not think in such terms. He knew only that he must now start over again in trying to discover a sequence and trace its progress along its circuit.

  The metallic serpent, thick and gross as any python, but, even at its shortest length, longer imcomparabl
y than any serpent or python of flesh and blood —

  — raised its head —

  — the Kar-chee —

  — placed the point, rather like a longer, larger, cross-bow bolt, flashing in every shade of blue, in the “head” of the serpentine machine, as though it were feeding it —

  The thing retracted, retreated, undulating across the floor of the teeming cavern until it came to the rocky wall-face, reared up, entered one of the drill-holes once more, retreated from it, more slowly this time, emerged entirely and withdrew … withdrew … withdrew … the head moving backward and ever backward but always keeping in direct line with the opening….

  An object whose precise shape Liam could not make out appeared briefly in the front of the monstrous “head” where its mouth would have been had it been a living thing.

  This it spat and, having projected it, at once the whole equipage subsided and Liam did not watch it. He observed the object shoot forward and enter the drill hole. And the drill hole vanished and all the wall of the rock about it vanished too as it came bursting … shattering … flying forward….

  Noise upon noise, crash upon crash, sound upon sound, rolling and thundering.

  Below, vast engines which had come into place received the expelled rubble. Moved it. Deposited it. Transported it. Washed it. Sorted it. Carried it away.

  And the sequence began all over again.

  The thing had been going on when they had first emerged at the abruptly shorn-off end of the old mine-tunnel, to discover this vast and (so Duro and Lors said) new-made cavern. But until Liam had set himself to analyzing and tracing the sequence, all had seemed chaos and Devilish confusion. He now had at least a part of it all clear in his mind. As he cast his eyes around again to see what he should next concentrate on, Cerry made a shuddering noise and Rickar made a sick one. The Rowan brothers hissed and half-started to their feet — but abruptly they lay down once more.

  And Liam, his eyes now following theirs, saw a dragon walking down the floor of the cavern and pausing slightly from time to time to move its head as though to fix a better hold on what it carried in its mouth — arms flailing, legs thrashing, mouth opened to utter unheard and unavailing screams and cries —