The Kar-Chee Reign

VII

Afterward he was to compare their retreat through the mine-caves to the passage of a troop of ants crawling through a sponge caught in a high wind. Over quivering ground, pelting by falling debris, half-stifled with dust, singed by burning air, more than once finding that either the roof or the floor or sometimes both the roof and the floor of a corridor they had planned to take had given way — such was their trip from the Kar-chee cavern to the world outside.

But the world outside seemed little if any more stable. No sky appeared likely to fall down in upon them, true, but the land quivered. Off-shore, far off-shore, a great bubble broke the surface of the water, and a great puff of steam rose and vanished into the air; presently the hot and muddy breath of the vexed sea-bottom reached them. Again and again and again…

While they watched, fascinated, alternately sweating and chilled, an entire headland slid, sighing and rumbling, into the ocean. Their ears were next buffeted by soundless concussions. As they stood, straining to hear, the earth rose and fell and rose again. Carefully they lay down their sacks and skins of warheads and subsided into sitting positions. Cracks and chasms opened, closed again with the sound of thunder-claps, only to reappear — so it seemed to their bemused and confused sight: as though a chasm was a living creature, now hiding and now disclosing himself — elsewhere.

And after these great shocks came stillness and silence.

Several of them made as though to get up, but Liam gestured them to remain where and as they were. His eyes were rapt and intent; the eyes of the others followed his without being able to see what he could see — but never doubting that he did see. “Wait…” he murmured through slightly-parted lips. They waited, uneasy but content. Cerry felt as she had upon that night when she had known that it was for him to lead and for her to follow and that he was one of those about whom tales were composed and songs sung: seers and doers and heroes…

And after the silence and the stillness came another quake, and this second one was greater than the first. And after that one they looked at him again and still his eyes (the one brown as loch-water and the other as blue-green as the sea itself) were focused afar off and again he said, this time in a whisper, “Wait…”

The third shock was mild and brief, and after it subsided Liam rose to his feet in one swift motion and stooped and carefully picked up his burden and walked off, silent and absorbed. And they silently followed them, all of them.

The face of the land was much changed in places. Here had been a stream and now already the gravel of its bed was drying in the sun; there had been an old watercourse dry except in the rainy season: now it rolled to the roiled sea in a torrent of liquid mud and it stank of the bowels of the earth. Once they had to detour inland because where the path had led now lay a new lagoon of water still faintly streaming and full of dead fish; but once they were able to proceed straight on through because what had been a high ridge of rock was now a flatland. Such marvels were many, but most marvelous of all was a gushing pillar of flame where natural gas, long imprisoned beneath the earth, had been freed and, rushing to the surface, had been met by a transforming touch of fire.

It was having gone but a short way beyond that they saw the Kar-chee.

There were a number of them — six, perhaps, or seven — and they stood upon their four lower limbs with their huge two upper limbs in the folded manner common to them, as though engaged in silent meditation and prayer. Only one of them looked up as the people came suddenly out of the woods, and this one made no motion other than the lifting of its head. Liam turned back on a diagonal course; Lors did the same; so did Duro, Fateem, and the others… except Rickar. He, as though unseeing, continued walking as he had been. Liam snapped his fingers. Clicked his tongue. Said, finally, low-voiced, “Rickar—”

A second Kar-chee lifted its wedge-shaped head. And a third. And Rickar gasped and halted. He looked wildly around him. What happened next was probably attributable to the fact that his whole mind and body told him to run but that he remembered — now! — Liam’s words of warning in the cavern: “Don’t stumble. Don’t drop any of these”—the blue detonation points. — ”Don’t run — but if you do run, lay them down — gently — first, and just leave them lie…” So he bent forward and deposited the sack he was carrying, and turned to run away after his friends.

And a fourth Kar-chee lifted his head, and a fifth.

And Rickar took two long steps. And saw that his friends were not running at all, but walking at a steady pace. He walked after them, perhaps half-a-dozen paces more. Then he realized what he had done. And he tried to undo it. He turned around and went back.

The act was confused, but it was not cowardly, and he might in the end have gotten away with it — if he had walked. But he did not. He ran. He ran back and he stooped. And the Kar-chee broke out of their own introspective detachment, or whatever mood it was which had been holding them fast; the Kar-chee were all around him and the Kar-chee were upon him and held him fast. One low and mournful cry he uttered; then he was still.

It was but a moment before they had the sack and knew what was in it. Perhaps they might have killed him then and there… but, although the people had seen, all of them, the Kar-chee cuffing the man in the cavern back to be baited by dragons, neither then nor anywhere else had they seen, nor heard — save in legend — of Kar-chee actually killing any human being themselves. This they seemed to leave to the dragons. And there seemed to be no dragons about.

Rickar’s friends looked on to see him dragged away — but for a moment only. They dared not use the blue warheads, of course — but the brothers Rowen still had in their pouches conventional crossbow bolts. At Liam’s nod they shot once… twice… so that the bolts landed in front of the retreating Kar-chee. The Kar-chee hesitated — but they did not stop. So Lors and Duro loaded again. And this time they loosed their bolts into the bodies of the two Kar-chee carrying Rickar between them, dangling. He fell. The Kar-chee stumbled. And then — and this was curious — it was as though the same train of thought now passed through the minds of the Kar-chee, for the one carrying the sack of blue detonators stooped and laid it on the ground; as he was doing so, two others seized Rickar, who had been too dazed to escape. And the others surrounded the injured Kar-chee; and all of them began to run.

They were heavy-laden, but they had four legs to run with, and the recocking of the heavy crossbows could not be done in a second. Then, from far off, but again and again, and each time nearer, came the call — the questing call — of a distant dragon. The people saw the wounded Kar-chee fall, saw the others — Rickar now swinging limply back and forth — race away. And then, at another command from Liam, they turned and walked rapidly off.

Old Gaspar trembled and shook. The quake had not unmanned him as this had. Liam felt for him; he had not realized that the Chief Knower had so much softness in him.

“My son, my only son… what a blow… what a blow,” he repeated. And then, shaking his head, lips trembling and eyes brimming, he asked, “How could he have done it? You—you have lived in ignorance; but he was a Knower. I knew that all was not well with him in his heart and that he lacked proper zeal to fulfill the obvious intentions of Manifest Nature… but still — but still! To engage in the blasphemous futility of resistance—!”

And his wife, old Mother Nor, covered her face with her hand and withdrew, silently, silently shaking her head.

The ark — and the other arks in process of building — had inevitably sustained some damage in the upheavals. Gaspar and his council of elders now set to work at quickened speed to repair, finish stocking up, and be gone. “For already the work of punishment and destruction has begun!”—thus, their cry.

But Liam had not quite the same notion.

“There’s no doubt that the Kar-chee had begun to put this place through the usual process. But I doubt that they’re ready for it yet. In fact, I’m confident that they’re not,” he told his small band of followers.

“Do you think that what’s happened has been just natural phenomena?” one of them asked, somewhat doubtfully.

Liam shook his head. “No. I’m sure that we set it off ourselves by firing the blue thunderheads down below, there! That cavern? — and the corridor we saw leading down from it? From the looks and the smell of it it seems to me that the Kar-chee were mining or sapping or perhaps just sampling and exploring down there. But likely not just—did you see how wary they and their Devil-dragons all were when the door on it opened? How they looked up and how they all kept on looking till the door closed?”

Lors said, softly, “And we blew it open again! We dropped the fire into the tub of oil…”

“Something like that. But I’ve been wondering and wondering, now… It does seem to me that two fire-charges shouldn’t have done all of this. And the Devils weren’t ready to have it done, either — else they wouldn’t have been down below in danger of being crushed to death like grubs or beetles. No…

“I think there must be another explanation, and I think that this is it: the Kar-chee had made that corridor, that shaft, to tap the hidden fires beneath the earth. And they planned to drive it even deeper and they must, I think, have had a great store of the blue fire-heads in that shaft. What drew their attention and kept it there? Eh? Danger!”

Lors repeated, “We dropped the fire into the tub of oil…”

The conversation was not slow, leisurely, philosophical. It was quick, excited, grim. And it turned, abruptly, onto another tack, as Liam opened his shirt. “Look at this,” he said, drawing something out.

This was a something for which they had no name or word, having never before seen it nor anything like it. They looked at it as he had directed and made sounds of awe or bewilderment as it changed shape in his hands: he drew it out… he pushed it back into a smaller compass than before… he showed them to what extent it was pliable in his hands… how now it became globular and now cubical and now it was flat… And with each change, and, it seemed — if one looked quickly and closely — even without each change of shape, the designs upon it changed… changed… subtly changed…

“What is this?” Fateem asked, whispering.

“I am not totally sure,” His voice had dropped, too. “But I am almost so — I believe this is what was called by men, a map! But it is not a man-made map, it is a Devil-made map — a Kar-chee map! I’ve always, as long as I’ve known that such things had ever been, wanted one. But not one like those very few I’d seen, ancient and worn and crumbling and of no practical use because they showed things as they had been, hundreds of years ago—”

“Before the Devils came…!”

“Yes… ‘before the Devils came.’ And, since then, do we not know? — what changes occurred? No! We do not know! Only that changes have occurred. Look! Look here — Do you see this?” His finger traced the curious outline upon the curious surface. “Do you know what it is? it’s a map of this land, this island! I’m sure of it. Or rather I should say, ‘This is how this island appears upon this map.’—Now: Thus it appears as though we were birds, looking down on it from the air as though floating fixed in one place. Now—” His hands moved, the “map” moved, the design changed, flowed, changed, stopped… more or less. “And this is how it looks as though from the side, but at what angle I am not sure, and… follow my finger… it goes right down from the top to the sea and beneath the sea… down… down… so… down, to where the island grows from the bottom of the sea the way a tree grows from, well, the bottom of the air—”

He groped for unfamiliar phrases to express unfamiliar conceptions. His eyes glowed and glittered and there was life and light upon his face such as none of them had ever seen before. But even as he spoke and they listened there was a distant rumble, the ground shook again, the sound of the surf was disturbed, and Cerry pointed a shaking finger at the outline of the map. And now it was she who whispered, “Look… look…”

At one point upon the surface of the chart the outline altered as they watched. Shifted… flowed… was still.

“What? Liam? What…?”

He said, with a kind of fierce joy in knowledge, “The ancients spoke of things, of measures, which they called dimensions. Length. Width. Depth. Time. Most of their maps showed only two of them: length and width. Some, as they called them, relief maps, these showed depth as well.” His fingers, scrabbling hastily in the dirt, tried to give evidence of what he was trying to explain and convey. “But none of these ancient maps ever showed or could ever show time! If an area changed, the map became obsolete… outdated… useless. It was necessary to make a new one. But — somehow — I don’t know how and it doesn’t matter now — somehow this Devil-map does show time!”

And his finger stabbed the surface of the chart. “And here we have the proof! Just now, this moment before, we heard and we felt another portion of the land go sliding into the sea — no doubt another link in the chain of reactions from the first shock — and when we heard this and felt this, we saw it, too! This map never becomes obsolete or ancient, for it is somehow a mirror reflecting every aspect of the earth-sea surface—and responding to every change in the earth-sea surface!”

There was brief silence. Some implication of what he was trying to imply came through; more confusion than enlightenment remained. But the conversation now shifted, and abruptly, for the third time, as Fateem said, in a dreamy, stifled voice, “But the Devils have Rickar, and we know what they will do with him…”

Gaspar would not listen. That is, they spoke to him, and they refused to stop speaking until they had told him in complete detail just what they had seen the Kar-chee and the dragons doing to the captives there in the cavern; and in a physical sense he could not have helped but hear them. Once or twice his eyes blinked very rapidly, but there was not a tear in them, and he neither replied nor even stopped in his moving from one place to another nor in his giving ceaseless orders and directions. His ears must have heard. But his mind would not listen. It was entirely possible that after they had done with talking he could not have repeated a single thing they had told him, even if he had wished to.

In his own way, certainly, he had loved his son — and from any ordinary danger he would certainly have risked his own life and the resources of his community in order to try to save his son’s life. But his commitment to the axioms and principles of the Knowers was total: Manifest Nature made certain demands of mankind, not capriciously but of necessity; if these were flouted the inevitable result was the punishment consisting of the double-Devils; the double-Devils were produced by unjust and sinful conduct; to resist them was to square the transgression, and — certainly — an attempt to aid one caught in doing so would be (at least) to cube it. Therefore Gaspar did not, would not, dared not, could not, allow his mind to consider what Liam and Fateem or anyone else was trying to tell him — that it was possible for Rickar still to be saved, perhaps — that it might well be that, in the shock of the quakes, no man-baiting had been held — and that, if Rickar were still living, it might be possible… somehow… somehow… to save him.

In which case it was imperative to try.

But Gaspar, clearly, would not try.

He would not even try.

Nor would any Knower.

What then?

While all those who followed Gaspar, whether of his original following, or the converts from the raft people, or those of the island’s people who had been persuaded that there was no hope or answer save in the arks — while all these toiled and troubled and swarmed like ants to bring their departure to as soon a moment as possible, Liam spoke his mind aloud to those few who followed him and who looked to him for hope and answer.

“He came with me because he trusted in me, and he trusted in me because I had once been in arms against the Kar-chee. He himself had never even seen them — to him they were just part of what the older people nagged on and on about. Probably he didn’t fully realize how dangerous they really are. But I did. And I let him come with me. Why? I wasn’t trying to defy people who had always been telling me what to do… No, it wasn’t mere rebellion with me. I wanted to know more about the two Devils, and I wanted to know more so that the next time I resisted them I would feel that something more than flight or slaughter would be the result.

“And he trusted and he followed. Now, the trip wasn’t for nothing. We’ve learned a few things. We know what they use to make the thunder that splits the rocks apart — and we’ve got much of it with us, too. And we know that what we saw in the cavern isn’t all that there is to see about the Kar-chee. There’s something more, much more, and it lies below — deep below. Well—

“Easy to say he was taken because of his own act. His act was based on my words and my words were meant to save the blue thunderheads. He did his best for them… for us… me…

“Shouldn’t we do our best for him? Should we? We saw something of the risk. Are we to take it? And if we aren’t, then what are we to do in place of it which justifies anything we’ve already done? — and particularly Rickar’s capture—”

His voice broke off. Not more than a few paces away three men trotted by, driving a group of llamas en route to the arks. The men’s face were grimed with the sweat of their haste and the dust of the path which rose and swirled around them. They did not notice the others; the others, intent upon Liam and on Liam’s questions, did not notice them. But Liam noticed them. And as he did, there welled up in him the thought that here was his answer—

But when he sought words to frame the answer he could not find them, and when he tried to resolve his thoughts he realized that he had no clear pictures of them. Yet the certainty persisted. The brown and white fleeces of the llamas, then, aboard the older ark… the newer ones, too, if they were readied in time, presumably… And then the answer, like a bubble, welled up and broke upon the surface of his mind.

He saw the relief mingled with excitement on the faces of his friends as they saw the change on his face. They listened, intent, undoubting, willing, absorbed, as he told them what was to be done. Their numbers were to be divided — thus and thus and thus — and, with them, the quantity of thunderheads; immediately the blue points were carefully separated. A few more directions were given, places appointed, hands shaken and withdrawn regretfully, caresses briefly exchanged.

On all sides sweating people streamed like ants to and from carrying provisions and material to the arks. Liam, Lors, and Duro walked, rapidly, apart, bound upon this mission of their own. The others watched out of sight, then parted upon their own assigned tasks. They had made their decisions. There was to be no room for them in the arks.

The two tall, gaunt dusty-black forms lay where they had fallen. Either the Kar-chee felt no impulse toward retrieving their dead for burial, or else the necessities of their present condition had allowed them no time to come back for this purpose. Still, the men had no way of knowing that the Devil-things might not come back at any moment. Prudently, Lors and Duro stood on different rises of ground, standing watch — but, equally prudently, they first pulled out the fatal bolts with their obsidian points and vanes and replaced them in their ammunition pouches.

Liam and Tom had in their time flayed and flensed many a carcass, but neither had ever dismembered a Kar-chee carcass. The task was inherently unpleasant, and was made more so by the bitter reek. Tom, his mouth twisted, said, “They have no bones, then… okh!”

Liam said, “They have, in a way, yes. This… this armor… on the outside — this is their bone. But as to the rest, I am in full agreement with you: okh!” He carefully pried and scraped. They had to use exceeding care, but they were infinitely hampered by their ignorance of the alien anatomy.

“If we had the time,” he said, “and if we had a vessel big enough, we might boil them like lobsters.” He grimaced and grunted, went on with his digging. They were not so much skinning these cadavers as excavating them. “This is one sort of armor which must have a chink in it…”

He wished that the three vigorous guanaco-hunters from the Uplands were here with them now. It had been the sight of the drove of llamas which had started the quick train of thought which led to guanacos, “cousins” to llamas; and simultaneously to what Lehi, Nephi, and Moroni had said about their methods of hunting the wary and wind-swift cameloids. Experienced in this technique, the Uplanders would be very useful in this present and dangerous enterprise… were they but here. But they were not; and there was no time to fetch them here.

Wind sounded and sighed in the trees, the surf (now unvexed in its timeless, ceaseless motion once again) murmured, and Liam and Tom, with teeth clenched and jaws set, worked at their grisly task. And at last they had done the brute and greater part of it; now came the part of more cunning and craft. Cords of sinews were threaded through and inserted and fastened, sticks put into place, the crossbows themselves — vertical — acting as excellent frames and braces. And then—

“Who’s to go inside?” Lors asked, eyeing the rude, quick jobs of taxidermy with a mixed air of admiration, doubt, caution, and impatience.

“I, not,” Liam grunted. “For I must have fully free movement of head and eyes to look all about and see what’s to be seen. Let the three of you choose amongst you.”

He had stripped before beginning work and so had only his hair and beard and skin to wash, squatting in the small pool left to dry up gradually when the brook had been ripped untimely from its accustomed bed. They had none of the coarse soap along with them; he ripped up grass and wadded it and scrubbed, then he scooped up sand and scrubbed, wincing, but nonetheless grateful that the abrasion removed the thickened, gummy ichorous exudations from his skin and hair. It should not have taken them long to choose, and, since Tom did not come to join him in the pool, he assumed that Tom had lost the choice; he was right.

Prepared as he was for what he saw, still he started at the sight: Two Kar-chee, erect and towering (but stooping a bit as was their way) over Lors, who — on seeing Liam stop and stare and then come on — assumed the stunned and hang-head look he evidently believed appropriate to a captive. And Liam, once into his clothes again, and thinking the other’s manner was right enough, assumed it, too. The pair started off, and, behind them, heads bobbing a bit, extra legs dragging a bit, from time to time uttering muffled exclamations, came Tom and Duro, concealed inside the armored skins of the dead Kar-chee.