The Kar-Chee Reign

VIII

Twice they saw Kar-chee off in the distance but could not tell if they themselves had been seen or not. And once a dragon lifted its head and flashed its faceted eyes at them; but then its head went down again and, with no more than a rather plaintive lowing, it ignored them as before. Once they heard the voices of men and themselves turned aside so as neither to encounter nor to be encountered. And once without warning a young girl and a much younger boy crossed their path. One of the men began to say something, but before his useless caution Don’t be afraid could advance more than a syllable the girl had snatched up the child and fled, silently, the long vocable of the boy’s wail floating behind them after they had gone from sight.

There was no need for them to go seeking for the right hole in the cliff-face which would lead to the right cave — for the cliff-face itself was rent apart as though it were a rotten piece of cloth; the immense rift running from top to bottom. And there, far within, beyond the fallen rubble and the shattered rock, like a cavity in a rotten tooth, they saw what they wanted.

The cavern they had formerly been in was recognizable by an occasional fragment of machinery protruding from beneath the caved-in roof. Very likely the store of thunder-heads, detonated by the collapse of the rock overhead, had done more damage than the quakes themselves. Liam feared that the way below might have been covered up altogether; and, indeed, he was never sure that it was not, for the corridor-shaft they found at last was located on altogether the other side of what had once been the immense chamber, its doors lying twisted and shattered beside the gaping orifice.

The strange and curious lamps which had once made the cavern a mixture of hissing, off-color lights and heaped-up shadows were now for the most part dim and silent where they were not vanished altogether… but only for the most part. Here and there a lamp lay on the uneven ground or protruded askew from a twisted wall or hung perilously from the rocky overhead, its sound reduced to a faint sibilant and its light reduced to a pale flicker… but it was enough for them to pick their way along by.

The smell of dragon was missing here but the smell of Kar-chee was musty and strong — not that Duro and Tom, inside their Kar-chee husks, would have noticed, half-stifled as they were by the smell of their own concealing cortices! They went, peering and pattering and picking and stumbling their way through the dim and tortured corridor. The ground trembled faintly. The way led steadily down and around.

Presently Liam stopped and held out his hands for the others to stop. After a moment, “Listen…” he said. He lifted his face and stared at the rock above.

After a while the others heard it, too. A whisper at first. Then the sound increased… ceased… was repeated more faintly… and again and again…

“What is it?” Lors asked.

“The surf. We are under the water now. Not very far under, but—”

Lors finished the phrase for him. “But the farther on we go, the farther under the water we’ll be.”

Liam nodded. He listened another moment to the long sound of the withdrawing/advancing/withdrawing waves up, up above and over them. Then he shrugged. Then they went on.

But, curiously, the trembling of the ground did not decrease as they went on. Liam at first thought that this might mean that the descent of the beach was matching the descent of the tunnel. It took not long for him to realize, however, that this implied by far too prolonged a beach, an interminable sallow which would have exhausted the drive of any surf. And, by and by, the trembling took on a rhythm which was different from that of the surf altogether.

And therefore the source of it, as it did not lie above, must lie below.

His preoccupation with this was such that he did not become fully aware of the other sounds until some time after — he realized — he had first become aware of them at all.

For a moment he thought he recognized those sounds: the dragging of the Kar-chee feet, the supernumary “extra” pair which were not animated by the human legs of Tom and Duro. Scrape … scuffle … rustle.. drag… Again he stopped and signaled the others to stop.

Scuffle… rustle.…

Scuffle… rustle.…

Tom and Duro had stopped, but the other sounds persisted — only to stop, themselves, abruptly. He moved on, signaled the three others to follow.

Scrape… drag.…

Scrape… drag.…

And then—

Scrape… scuffle… rustle … drag.…

Now he knew the sounds that Tom and Duro made, by themselves. And now he knew, too, the sounds that whatever-it-was-behind-him made. And it was clear now, too, that whatever-it-was-behind-him knew that there was something ahead of itself: hence the stopping and the waiting when they stopped and waited. Did whatever-it-was-behind-him have a clear notion of what they were, there, ahead? Was whatever-it-was being merely cautious and avoiding catching up for no other reason than safety? Or was whatever-it-was fully aware of what Lors and Liam and Duro and Tom were? — and was it following them?

Such speculation might go on forever and leave him none the wiser; he might still be speculating when the boom dropped or the roof fell in, or — He looked ahead and around him for a favorable lay of land. Scrape … scuffle … rustle … drag…

The pallid, shuddering light faded away behind them. Shadows crouched, simulating rocks, doors, monsters, beasts, pools. The air was tight and close and thick… thick as the shadows. Scrape … scuffle … rustle … drag…. But only part of this series of sounds was significant, now. Tentatively, he thrust his foot into a heap of shadow; turned, gestured to the others to go on; withdrew into the shadows, into the cleft of the rock, as silent as the shadows and as the rock itself.

He watched Lors continue on his way, watched the two masquerade-figures go after him, each with head bowed, fore-limbs folded, lower-limbs two moving slowly and stiffly and two scraping and dragging.

Liam hid. Liam waited.

Before him in the half-light and the half-darkness, the sound of scrape and drag became fainter; the sound of scuffle and rustle became louder. Ever since the sound had first reached him, he had known what it must have been. A multitude of images had clustered and gestured: Old Gaspar muffled in a cloak and bound on the mission of exposing blasphemous resistors. A raftsman still resentful of Liam’s leadership and now intent on vengeance. A friend or kinsman of young Rickar, brooding over Fateem’s transfer of affection and awe… Others. Others. Many others. But he had all along known them for what they were: illusions. And now came truth.

And truth came, as he had known it must, in the form of a Kar-chee.

The strange procession continued on its way down and along the twilighted corridor, the twisting and tubular corridor which the invaders must have made and made quickly, as naturally and as easily an ant-hill or a wasps-nest is made. First went Lors. Men: Captive. Then came Duro and Tom. Men: Masked: Pretended Captors. Then came the live, the real Kar-chee. Then came Liam, not so much pursuing the pursuer as tracking the tracker.

It was impossible to say with surety that the creature was suspicious or alarmed or that the creature knew exactly what had happened. How could any man know these things? Yet everything seemed to point toward the Kar-chee’s being aware that all was neither right nor normal. It had been following them for some time, now. It had not intentionally made its presence known. When they had stopped, it had stopped, too. Liam tried to imagine… suppose that two smaller Kar-chee had slain and flayed two men and concealed themselves in the skins — somehow — The image would not itself be imagined; Kar-chee were even less fitted for that imposture than the other way around. Still… still… was it possible that he, Liam, could be deceived?

The dragon had clearly seen them in the daylight and had done nothing. Had seemed neither alarmed nor in the least suspicious. So why — now, in the darkness — should this Kar-chee be stalking them? But even as he asked the question he admitted to himself that the question was no proper question: it was comparing apples with onions, or seals with foxes. The dragons were the creatures of the Kar-chee and no man knew just how close the relations between them were… but the dragons were, after all, dragons. And not Kar-chee. What, therefore, the Kar-chee had in mind was known and could be known only to the Kar-chee itself.

Which the Kar-chee proceeded soon enough to reveal.

The shadows had begun, faintly but perceptively, to lengthen in Liam’s direction. And shortly the light ahead of them came into sight. And the Kar-chee “spoke”! The three ahead, as they heard the loud challenge, the chirring and clicking that resounded and echoed; jerked and started and had begun to turn around — all quickly and in an instant—

But the Kar-chee moved more quickly and it hurled itself forward on its four hind limbs and raised its two huge upper limbs as though to strike. Liam ran and leaped and hurtled upon it, hitting it low down but catching hold at once as it staggered. As it gibbered and threshed, he threw his whole weight forward. The Kar-chee staggered, straggled desperately to keep its balance, jerked and clashed its “arms,” fell forward.

Lors slipped his knife into it just below and behind the head, twisted, slashed. The Kar-chee writhed, then lay very still.

“If I hadn’t noticed that soft spot there, when you were skinning it—” Lors panted. “If I hadn’t noticed it—!”

Liam hissed for quiet. Tom and Duro stood about, helpless as they had been during the brief straggle. Something sounded from ahead and below. Liam and Lors dragged the body back and into the shadows, and the younger concealed the knife once more in the scabbard hanging within his shirt; then he and Liam resumed their position in front as before and they all went on.

Light burst in upon them.

They came out upon an immense shaft which seemed to extend as far above them as it did below them. Their passage, and others which they could see, entered upon a spiral ramp which threaded its way from top to bottom, winding around and around and around. Above was an immense dome and around the rim of this water dripped and ran incessantly and fell in sheets and torrents. Strange engines crawled around and around the framework below the rim, clicking and clacking and moving slowly; where each one passed, the inflow of water ceased; then it began to drip once more. And below—

Even at the first glimpse of the gigantic vertical tube two — at least two — possibilities had come to Liam’s mind. Either this enormous work had been done in the short time since the Kar-chee had entered the island… or it had been prepared by them at a previous visitation: perhaps at the time they had split the area off from the mainland and, having mulcted and milked and crushed and washed and wasted most of it, sunk the major part beneath the sea. Subsequently a third possibility occurred to him: that it was not a Kar-chee work at all, but was a remnant of the ancient works of man. But all this was theory and speculation and of no immediate importance or assistance.

For below was a scene which dwarfed even the one they had seen in the great cavern above. Catchment channels received and carried off the flow of water — this was essential, but this alone was, comparatively, nothing; for on the floor of the immense pit below the Kar-chee swarmed and toiled like ants. An enormous ramp led up from the floor and was lost from sight to them looking down from above as its length went out of sight and out of the pit. But as to what its purpose was and what had used it recently, they were left in no doubt. The sky-ships were a dull black which seemed the negation of all light. Even at that height they were gigantic. One of them seemed to rest a bit askew and its lines appeared vaguely asymmetrical at that point where Kar-chee and machines most closely swarmed around and upon it; a second received at least as much attention and had had a part of its hull peeled back. It was like looking into the inside of an insect-nest — cells and passages pullulating with quick, inhuman life. And the center and seeming source of all this fevered energy was the third ship. Nothing at all untoward seemed to have befallen it and evidently it was serving as principal energy source for the repairs which its two fellow-vessels were undergoing; they and the clustering engines were attached to it by a multitude of throbbing and umbilical-like connections.

Deprived of one subterranean passage by the quakes and crashes, the Kar-chee still had another one and still their engines toiled into and within and out from it. Despite all of Liam’s skepticism, the sight of those flickering flame-shadows and the recollection of those blasts of heat and the hot-steamy ocean-muddy smell brought to his mind an unwanted speculation: that perhaps the several Hells of which the oldmothers had prattled and nattered had a counterpart somewhere here below… And, as before and elsewhere, great armored engines crawled and humped themselves along this route until they, too, vanished from sight.

“There,” said Lors, slightly inclining his head to indicate direction; “there are the things which we saw in the sky at night before the ark came. Those great black things — with thunder and lightning — What are they, Liam? Do you know? And how did they get here? And what is being done to them?”

Equally low-voiced, Liam said, “I think that they must be the things the Devils came in… a sort of, well, ship… that rides the air instead of the water. I don’t know how. There must be a huge passage into this place from above to below. Here is the Kar-chee headquarters, no doubts of that. And here they are repairing the damage done by the quake. Here they are… and here we are. And now, what are we going to do?”

“Look for Rickar?”

“Yes… we came here for that. He’s not down below on the bottom, as near as I can see. Where, then? It’s possible, I suppose, though I hope not, that they might have killed him before bringing him here — didn’t bring him here at all, I mean. But somehow I doubt that. No… And clearly they’re in no mood for games down there right now. But — when they’re done—

“So. If not there, where?”

Suddenly he began to whistle, and he went on whistling. There was no reaction from any of the Kar-chee, either down below or anywhere on the winding ramp. Possibly the noise of the repair-work at the bottom masked the sound down there. But it must surely be audible for quite a distance and at levels far enough removed from the mechanical noises. Quite possibly the sound simply conveyed nothing to them. It was unlikely that any human had ever before deliberately undertaken to whistle in the presence of Kar-chee; it was, after all, an occupation inseparable from leisure and from peace of mind. Or it might be that the sound was not registerable on their auditory equipment… whatever that might be like, and if indeed they had any. Just as there were sounds which dogs and other beasts could hear but humans could not, so it might be that this particular sound made by and hearable by humans was simply not hearable by the Kar-chee.

Now and then some one or two of the Kar-chee bent on errands of their own looked up or down or across the great pit at them and fixed gaze upon them for a while; but it was never a long while. In a moment the gaze passed on, and so did the Kar-chee. For all that he could observe to the contrary, Liam’s hope and scheme that other Kar-chee would merely assume that he and Lors were captives of the two supposed Kar-chee behind them was working out so far.

It had gotten them a good way into the enemy camp. But whether it would help fulfill their mission there and get them all out safely again remained to be seen.

Lors said, “Stop.”

It seemed to Liam that he could hear a faint, shrill sound far away upon the close air. Whence had it come? From the corridor whose doorway they had just passed? Or from elsewhere? Liam started on again down the ramp.

Duro said, “Stop.”

His voice was muffled by the concealing carapace. He had moved so that he was facing across the pit. A Kar-chee was there, facing them. His chirring and clicking was only faintly audible, but if that and the precise meaning of his gesticulating was incomprehensible, the direction in which he was gesturing was not. Back, the gestures indicated. Up — back—

Liam said a word or two. The four of them exchanged places, reversed directions, proceeded up and back the way they had come, entered the doorway they had passed before. The other Kar-chee proceeded on his way with the same deliberate pace as before.

There was only a doorway, there was no door. Whether this was usual or not Liam could not say. There had been doors and more than one door, in fact, in that glimpse of the deep-driving undersea caverns. But no door on any corridor here. As for the gaunt, black Kar-chee castles which legends place here and there in far lands, legend did not report on any man who had returned to speak in detail on the subject of doors.

The hallway wound down and around as well, through on a lesser incline than the main ramp, and it smelled mustily of Kar-chee and it was lit in the same odd fashion as all their other habitations; Liam wondered if this might be due not only to differences in mechanics but to difference between Kar-chee and human eyesight… and he wondered, rather more pressingly, if the Kar-chee who had gestured them hither had done so because he had seen through the disguise and was calmly sending them to somehow their death, or because—

Lors had said Stop and Duro had said Stop but Liam now merely held up his hand and held it out, holding the others back. Not far ahead, but hidden from sight by the curving corridor, a single Kar-chee “spoke.” Another one, sound just perceptibly different, “answered.” Then the first one replied… or at any rate “spoke” again. There was a groan, in the midst of which the second Kar-chee resumed his speaking. The strange dialogue continued, thus, intermittently. But there was not another groan. Liam’s hands made swift motions. And things began to move.

He and Lors helped, as quickly as they could — unfamiliar task — Duro and Tom to wriggle and squirm out of the Kar-chee carapaces. They emerged, ichorous and odorous and with faces indicating pleasure at being out and loathing at having been in. The cross-bows, which had served as framework to hold the upper parts of the scarecrows in place, were next extracted, and Liam pulled off his shirt for a rag to clean them — quickly and hastily and not totally effectually, but well enough, so that the cord was not likely to slip or the bolt to stick.

Then the four of them went on… Tom and Liam first, propping one of the Kar-chee-things up and holding it up and holding it so that it projected ahead of them. It was not an easily performed task, and they went on slowly, slowly… slowly…

It was not too hard to conjecture the feelings of two men, conversing together, if suddenly the head and upper torso of another man came into sight round the bend of a corridor — head drooping, torso at a probably impossible angle — and then, equally suddenly, vanished from sight again. The men who witnessed this might have thought… anything. But it is reasonably sure that, think what they might, part of their natural reaction would be to go and see what—

And thus did the Kar-chee.

The first one came into full and almost immediate view, incautiously, and, as it turned out, almost immediately fatally: Duro, to whom first shot had been assigned, caught it with a bolt which pierced an eye and emerged through the top of the brain pan. The second showed himself just as the first was falling, took in enough of the scene to be warned, and withdrew — but not quite soon enough. They were never sure just where the second bolt had pierced this one, so swiftly had it turned and tumbled, threshing about; they did not pause to find out, but flung themselves upon it, knives in hand, seeking for the soft and unprotected hidden places in the chitin, the chinks in the armor; trying all the while to avoid the blows of the huge and murderous-looking anterior fore-limbs.

They found what they had sought.

And found too, in a chamber opening onto the corridor, naked and bleeding and bound… incoherent… Rickar.

They unfastened his curious bonds (there was actually only one knot, and that behind, where he could never have reached it: yet it gave upon a single tug of the short, protruding claw, and fell in loose folds away from him) and he moaned; they rubbed his limbs, and he groaned; they spoke to him… softly… sharply… he rolled his eyes… and, at last, they slapped his face.

He stopped rolling his eyes and whimpering. He saw the dead Kar-chee and he screamed — a cry which caught them so by surprise that he had time to catch his breath before they muffled his mouth with their hands.

What the Kar-chee had done to him, or what he had thought they might do to him, they did not know, and had no time to ask. “Listen, Rickar,” Liam said, urgently, “we have risked our lives in coming here, and we have come here for you. So get hold of yourself, and now! — so that we can get away from here, all of us!”

Rickar’s eyes had begun to focus and now seemed fully sensible; he nodded.

“Can you walk now?”

“Yes…”

They helped him to his feet and he hissed in sudden pain and pulled away. They eyed the cruel marks on his lower fore-arms where his captors had gripped and carried him away. And then, though they had been in full haste, they now came to full stop. Something forgotten lay before them — the husks of the dead Kar-chee, which two of them had for a while inhabited. And both two now said, simultaneously, “Not me, this time!”

There was only a second’s hesitation, then Liam said, “No time for anyone, this time!”

Out the winding corridor and up the winding ramp they went again, hugging the wall in hopes they might not be seen from below, and in fear that they might encounter any coming down from above. From far down below the ceaseless clangor of repairs testified to the continued presence of the many Kar-chee there. Above, visible between the struts and bars of metal scaffolding, the great and ponderous engine crept around and around with infinite slowness along the inside of the dome, sealing and resealing it against leaks from the sea above and outside which pressed forever down upon and against it with its terrible and eternal pressure.

But on the middle areas, where their route lay, there appeared no one and nothing except themselves, as up they toiled, around and around the inside of the pit, like insects on the screw-thread of an enormous cylinder. And then from below, though not very far from below, a new sound suddenly burst upon their ears, like the nocturnal screech of insects, but magnified ten-thousand-fold.

And from farthest below, a background of equally sudden and ringing silence, came awareness that the mechanical noise of repair had ceased.

Duro and Rickar, ignoring or perhaps not even hearing Liam’s hissed warning not to stop, went almost instinctively to the edge of the ramp and looked. Below and across stood a single Kar-chee, head thrown far back and thorax visibly vibrating, and from this one came the shrill high chirr of alarm; in its foreclaws was the flayed integument of one of the dead Kar-chee. Again and again the ear-piercing tocsin sounded, then it faded… and then it suddenly rang out afresh and with a different note as the Kar-chee gestured for attention with one fore-limb and with the other pointed up and over to the two who stood, as though ossified, where they had stepped — on the rim of the ramp and plain to all view.

“Come back! Away! Come away!” Liam cried, knowing it was too late anyway.

But still they didn’t move and still they stood there and still the dread shrill chittering and chirring of accusation and alarm stirred the close air of the great pit and beat upon the shuddering ear-drums. Swiftly flashed through Liam’s mind the possibility that the sound was intended perhaps not only to alert the Kar-chee of danger but also as a sort of auditory fascinating directed against the creature posing the danger… something instinctive and reactive, likely — and what inner Kar-chee realizations must have taken place, now, here, suddenly, now! for them for the first time thus to react to mankind or any of its deeds…

Liam and Lors rushed forward and seized the recalcitrant pair and hustled them back and away, breaking the spell; they ran, they ran, they all ran, fleeing and sounding in swift and troubled breath full awareness of danger: but Liam and Lors, in doing what they had done, had also exposed to the enemy their own presences—

From below arose great and shuddering, shattering sound which made the very air to tremble, as all the Kar-chee below broke into the same clamor of alarm — and, abandoning engines and machines and tools, toil and repair alike, poured up the winding ramp in pursuit.

The men caught one glimpse of this and then dared look no more either behind or below, but tore up the incline with flying limbs and quavering breaths, not attempting to think how many more turns or how turns were to be measured before they reached the corridor which would lead them eventually to the outside and (they hoped, perhaps without much reason) to safety. Hearts swelling, bodies sweating, feet pounding, knees bent—

“Blasphemers!” cried Gaspar.

“Recusants! Rebels!” shouted Lej.

And they barred the way.

“For the sake of our life — of all our lives! — yours, yours! — don’t stop us now!” cried Liam, seizing the old Knower and trying either to thrust him aside or to pull him along. But he stood there, fixed and firm, like stone, immovable. And so did Lej and so was Lej.

“Father, father,” wept Rickar. “What they did to me—! Let us go!” he implored.

But Gaspar’s face showed no sign of joy on seeing his son among the living; it became clear to Liam, afterward, that most of the old man’s sorrow — perhaps even all of it — had been for his son’s defection and not for his actual loss. “Impious child,” he declared, shaking his head so violently that his beard and his long hair whipped about, “do those who have entered the grave seek to crawl up from it to instruct the living?”

Shouting, “Look down there! Look! Look!” Lors threw himself upon Lej, who thrust him back so quickly and strongly that he almost lost his balance and fell into the pit.

“Down there is nothing but deserved judgment and punishment for you!” cried Lej.

“Deserved or not, it will be punishment for all of us,” Liam shouted, frantic at the thought that, having thus far escaped all perils, they were now in danger of perishing from this pair’s fanaticism. Previously, however absurd old Gaspar’s arguments had been, they had still been presented calmly and with some show of logic. But now the old Knower acted like one unhinged.

“Rogues!” he shouted. “Scoundrels! Rebels! Is it not enough, the damage you have already done? As a result of your wicked resistance we suffered the crippling quakes and waves which have delayed our necessary departure. And now you wish to tempt and provoke Nature even more, and thus destroy us all!”

Little bubbles of spittle lined his lips, and his hands clawed the air; then, abruptly, he hastened to the rim of the ramp and in a voice between a scream and a howl he cried, “Devils, Devils! Just is your rage, but direct it towards these, to them who have defied you, and not against us! We have lived virtuously all of our lives, Lej and I and the rest of us, never resisting, never—”

Liam lifted his hand and rushed at Lej, who tensed and pushed to parry the blow; and Liam seized him and threw him heavily to the ground. “Come on! Come on!” He darted up and away, and Lors and Duro and Tom rushed after and along with him.

Behind they could hear Gaspar still shrieking out his insane petition. Then, abruptly, his voice dropped, and he declared, quite calmly. “Let them run; from the Manifestations of Nature there can be no escape for long… Devils, Lej and I will step aside so as not to impede you in your pursuit: but spare the others above — or at least spare those of them who…”

Distance, and the noise of their own running feet and the strident ululation, prevented the fugitives from hearing the rest of his comments. And then came a sound which broke their stride — and then another which brought them to a halt: Gaspar’s voice, raised in one long and incredulous vocable of protest; and overwhelming that, Lej’s voice, raised beyond a pitch they would have thought possible, in terror…

And in pain…

Rickar’s eyes bulged; his mouth swept back into a grim and almost skeletal grin; he half-turned. Tom and Liam grabbed him, Lors pulled, Duro pushed, and they all fled once more; and now their pace flagged never.