The Witches of Karres (6 page)

He smeared two more buns with
Wintenberry
jelly, drank a large mug of cone-seed coffee, finished every scrap of the omelette of swan hawk eggs and then, in a state of pleasant repletion,
toyed
around with his slice of roasted
Bollem
liver. Boy, what food! He must have put on fifteen pounds since he landed on
Karres.

He wondered how Toll kept that slim figure. Regretfully, he pushed himself away from the table, pocketed her note for a souvenir and went out on the porch. There a tear-stained
Maleen
b
ur
i
ed herself into his arms.

"Oh, Captain!" she
sobbed.
"You're leaving
—"

"Now, now!" murmured the captain, touched and surprised by the lovely child's grief. He patted her shoulders
soothingly.
"I'll be back," he said rashly.

"Oh, yes, do come back!" cried Maleen. She hesitated and added, "I become marriageable two years from now—Karres time."

"Well, well," said the captain, dazed. "Well, now—
"

He set off down the path a few minutes later, a strange melody
tinkling
in his head. Around the first curve, it changed abruptly to a shrill keening which seemed to originate from a spot some two hundred feet before him. Around the next curve, he entered a small, rocky clearing full of pale, misty, early-morning sunlight and what looked like a slow motion fountain of
gleaming
rainbow globes. These turned out to be clusters of large,
varihued
soap bubbles which floated up steadily from a wooden tub full of hot water, soap, and the Leewit. Toll was bent over the tub; and the Leewit was objecting to a morning bath with only that minimum of interruptions required to keep her lungs pumped full of a fresh supply of air.

As the captain paused beside the little family group, her red, wrathful face came up over the rim of the tub and looked at him.

"Well, Ugly," she squealed, in a renewed outburst of rage, "who are you staring at?" Then a sudden determination came into her eyes. She pursed her lips. Toll upended her promptly and smacked her bottom.

"She was going to make some sort of a whistle at you," she explained hurriedly. "Perhaps you'd better get out of range while I can keep her head under... And good luck
.
Captain!"

Karres seemed even more deserted than usual this morning. Of course it was quite early. Great banks of fog lay here and there among the huge dark trees and the small bright houses. A breeze sighed sadly far overhead. Faint, mournful bird-cries came from still higher up—it might have been swan hawks reproaching him for the omelet.

Somewhere in the distance somebody
tootled
on a wood instrument, very gently. He had gone halfway up the path to the landing field when something buzzed past him like an enormous wasp and went
CLUNK!
into the bole of a tree just before him. It was a long, thin, wicked-looking
arrow.
On its shaft was a white card, and on the card was printed in red letters:

STOP, MAN OF
NIKKELDEPAIN!

The captain stopped and looked around cautiously. There was no one in sight. What did it mean?

He had a sudden feeling as if all of
Karres
were rising up silently in one stupendous cool, foggy trap about him. His skin began to crawl. What was going to happen?

"Ha-ha!" said
Goth,
suddenly visible on a rock twelve feet to his left and eight feet above him. "You did stop!"

The captain let his breath out slowly. "What did you think I'd do?" he inquired. He felt a little faint.

She slid down from the rock like a lizard and stood before him. "Wanted to say goodbye!" she told him. Thin and brown, in jacket, breeches, boots, and cap of grey-green rock lichen colour, Goth looked ve
r
y much in her element. The brown eyes looked up at him steadily; the mouth smiled faintly; but there was no real expression on her face at all. There was a quiver full of those enormous arrows slung over her shoulder and some arrow-shooting device—not a bow—in her left hand. She followed his glance.

"Bollem
hunting up the mountain," she explained. "The wild ones. They're better meat."

The captain reflected a moment. That's right, he recalled; they kept the tame Bollem herds mostly for milk, butter, and cheese. He'd learned a lot
of impor
tant
things about
Karres,
all right! "Well," he said, "goodbye Goth!" They shook hands
gravely.
Goth was the real Witch of
Karres,
he decided. More so than her sisters, more so even than Toll. But he hadn't actually learned a single thing about any of them. Peculiar people! He walked on, rather
glumly.

"Captain!" Goth called after him. He turned. "Better watch those take-offs," Goth called, "or you'll kill yourself yet!"

The captain cussed softly all the way up to the Venture. And the take-off was terrible! A few swan hawks were watching but, he hoped, no one else.

There was, of course, no possibility of resuming direct trade in the Empire with the cargo they'd loaded for him. But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Councilor
Onswud
would let a genuine fortune slip through his hands because of technical embargoes.
Nikkeldepain
knew all the tricks of interstellar merchandising, and the councilor was undoubtedly the s
l
ickest unskinned
miffel
in the Republic. It was even possible that some sort of trade might be made to develop eventually between
Karres
and
Nikkeldepain.

Now and then he also thought of
Maleen
growing marriageable two years hence,
Karres
time. A handful of
witchnotes
went
tinkling
through his head whenever that idle reflection occurred.

The
calendric
chronometer informed him he'd spent three weeks there. He couldn't remember how their year compared with the standard one. He discovered presently that he was growing remarkably restless on this homeward run. The ship seemed unnaturally quiet—that was part of the trouble. The captain's cabin in particular and the passage leading past it to the Venture's old crew quarters had become as dismal as a tomb. He made a few attempts to resume his sessions of small talk with
Illyla
via her picture; but the picture remained aloof.

He couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong. Leaving
Karres
was involved in it, of course; but he wouldn't have wanted to stay on that world indefinitely, among its hospitable but secretive people. He'd had a very agreeable, restful interlude there; but then it clearly had been time to move on. Karres wasn't where he belonged.
Nikkeldepain...?

He found himself doing a good deal of brooding about Nikkeldepain, and realized one day, without much surprise, that if it weren't for Illyla he simply wouldn't be going back there now. But where he would be going instead, he didn't know.

It was puzzling. He must have been changing gradually these months, though he hadn't become too aware of it before. There was a vague, nagging feeling that somewhere was something he shou
l
d be doing and wanted to be doing. Something of which he seemed to have caught momentary glimpses of late, but without recognizing it for what it was. Returning to Nikkeldepain
,
at any rate, seemed suddenly like walking back into a narrow, musty cage in which he had spent too much of his life...

Well, he thought, he'd have to walk back into it for a while again anyway. Once he'd found a way to discharge his obligations there, he and Illyla could start looking for that mysterious something else together.

The days went on and he learned for the first time that space travel could become nothing much more than a large hollow period of boredom. At long last, Nikkeldepain II swam up in the screens ahead. The captain put the Venture in orbit, and broadcast the ship's identification number. Half an hour later Landing Control called him. He repeated the identification number, added the ship's name, owner's name, his name, place of origin, and nature of cargo.

The cargo had to be described in detail. It would be attached, of course; but at that point he could pass the ball to
Onswud
and
Onswud's
many connections.

"Assume Landing Orbit 21,203 on your instruments," Landing Control instructed him curtly. "A customs ship will come out to inspect."

He went on the assigned orbit and gazed moodily from the vision ports at the flat continents and oceans of Nikkeldepain II as they drifted by below. A sense of equally flat depression overcame him suddenly. He shook it off and remembered Illyla.

Three hours later a ship ran up next to him, and he shut off the orbital drive. The communicator began buzzing. He switched it on.

"Vision, please!" said an official-sounding voice. The captain
frowned,
located the vision stud of the communicator screen and pushed it down. Four faces appeared in the screen, looking at him.

"Illyla!" the captain said.

"At least," young Councilor Rapport said unpleasantly, "he's brought back the ship
.
Father Onswud!"

Councilor
Onswud
said nothing. Neither did
Illyla.
Both continued to stare at him, but the screen wasn't good enough to let him make out their expressions in detail. The fourth face, an unfamiliar one above a uniform collar, was the one with the official-sounding voice.

“You are instructed to open the forward lock
.
Captain
Pausert,"
it said,
"for an
official investigation."

It wasn't until he was about to release the outer lock to the control room that the captain realized it wasn't Customs who had sent a boat out to him but the Police of the Republic. However, he hesitated only a moment. Then the outer lock gaped wide.

He tried to explain. They wouldn't listen. They had come on board in contamination-proof
repulsor
suits, all four of them; and they discussed the captain as if he weren't there. Illyla looked pale and angry and beautiful, and avoided looking at him. However, he didn't want to speak to her in front
of-the
others anyway.

They strolled back through the ship to the storage and gave the
Karres
cargo a casual glance.

"Damaged his lifeboat, too!" Councilor Rapport remarked.

They brushed past him up the narrow passage and went back to the control room. The policeman asked to see the log and commercial records. The captain produced them. The three men studied them briefly. Illyla gazed
stonily
out at
Nikkeldepain
II.

"Not too carefully kept!" the policeman pointed out.

"Surprising he
bothered
to keep them at all!" said Councilor Rapport.

"But it's all clear enough!" said Councilor Onswud.

They straightened up then and faced him in a line. Councilor Onswud folded his arms and projected his craggy chin. Councilor Rapport stood at ease, smiling faintly. The policeman became officially rigid.

"Captain Pausert," the policeman said, "the following charges—substantiated in part by this preliminary examination—are made against you—
"

"Charges?" said the captain.

"Silence, please!" rumbled Councilor Onswud.

"First, material theft of a quarter-million
maels
value of jewels and jeweled items from a citizen of the Imperial Planet
of Porlumma
—
"

"They were returned!" the captain said indignantly.

"Restitution, particular
l
y when inspired by fear of retribution, does not affect the validity of the original charge," Councilor Rapport quoted, gazing at the ceiling.

"Second," continued the policeman. "Purchase of human slaves, permitted under Imperial law but prohibited by penalty of ten years to lifetime penal servitude by the laws of the Republic of Nikkeldepain—“

"I was just taking them back where they belonged!" said the captain.

"We shall get to that point presently," the policeman replied. '
'
Third, mat
e
rial theft of sundry items in the value of one hundred and eighty thousand maels from a ship of the Imperial Planet
of Lepper,
accom
panied
by threats of violence to the ship's personnel—
"

"I might add in explanation of the significance of this particular charge," added Councilor Rapport, looking at the floor, "that the Regency of
Sirius,
containing
Lepper,
is allied to the Republic of
Nikkeldepain
by commercial and military treaties of considerable value. The Regency has taken the trouble to point out that such hostile conduct by a citizen of the Republic against citizens of the Regency is likely to have an adverse effect on the duration of the treaties. The charge thereby becomes compounded by the additional
charge
of a treasonable act against the Republic." He glanced at the captain. "I believe we can forestall the
accused's
plea that these pilfered goods also were restored. They were, in the face of superior force!"

"Fourth," the policeman went on patiently, "depraved and licentious conduct while acting as commercial agent, to the detriment of your employer's business and reputation—
"

"WHAT?" choked the captain.

"
—involving three of the notorious Witches of the Prohibited Planet of
Karres—"