The Kar-Chee Reign (8 page)

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.”

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.

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.’ ”