Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

So on they went, past the sheep-pens freshly littered with sawdust, past the woman plying distaff and spindle, past the sick-bay where some of the raft-people still lay, down to the close-packed but neatly arranged living-quarters — hammocks lashed and stowed; bachelors’ section here, single women there, nursery, married couples’ quarters; supplies: food, seed, tools, cloth, yarn, hides, salt, spices, water. Father Gaspar checked everything, inspected the rude but serviceable pumps, peered into each of the tripart hulls — and talked… talked… talked…

After a long, long time he informed them that it was his period for rest, and politely dismissed them.

Back up on deck, in a niche which, as no one else seemed to have claimed it, they made their own, Liam looked at Cerry. And she at him. After a moment, he asked, “And what, exactly, did the Mother inform you about cohabitation?”

She half-smiled, half-scowled. “Oh… since no one knows for sure how long we’ll be at sea, and since pregnancy and childbirth would be inconvenient for the duration of the voyage, all cohabitation has to be, well, ‘qualified,’ was her word for it. I can go into details if you’d really like.”

“Not necessary.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said, moodily.

“I haven’t forced you or distrained you. I don’t now.”

She blew out her lips. “Thank you, brave one. I understand that I am free to take my sheepskin elsewhere for qualified cohabitation…” With a quick expression of her face she showed what she thought of that, and with a quick glance of her eye and pressure of her hand on his she showed what she still thought of Liam. Then, “Well, the Mother is not a bad old one, considering that she’s been the sole wife of old Father Know-it-all for thirty years. Tell me, Liam: are they all quite mad? Or just him?”

He said, “I suppose it’s a sort of qualified madness, one may say. Don’t laugh, lewd woman… I don’t know for sure what to think of it all. Except that I think for sure that I am glad this vessel, ark , as they call it, was there when we were there… wherever we were… If we just had a map… Well. Every man hath his own madness . A saying from our own wise ancients…”

He ruffled her light hair. The ark women had been obliged to cut it short, so tangled had it been. “This is no single, simple thread we have to follow; this you know, Cerry, don’t you? It goes weaving in and weaving out, it leads through the fire and the sea and storm, it’s full of knots, but the knots are proper parts of it. The Knowers are one knot. We’ll unravel it yet. And we will be sure of finding use for the slack as well. I’m sure of that.”

He was sure of little else but that. The ark folk were kind enough—”imprecise” though their captain-priest-father might find the term; they went about their duties with efficiency. If Liam were pressed to name a particular impression received from them, he might have inverted the reply by saying that he was most impressed by a lack of any strong impression. Listless was by far too strong a term. Browbeaten was equally untrue — Gaspar, the Father Knower, might perhaps have simply overwhelmed them all by his ceaseless flow of wordage. Chiefly he felt the lack of any stronger personality, single or collective. And if there were more to it than that, then he did not know.

The vessel was both the largest and the oddest he had ever seen. It had stepping for a mast — and, indeed, several mast sections as well as huge rolls of matting doubtless intended for sail were all clearly visible on deck — yet the mast was not stepped and the breeze did no more than cool the air… cunningly diverted belowdecks by screens set for the purpose at the ladderheads. Also, thole-pins were in place and sweeps of a size for them all neatly arranged; yet no oar was set up; only the tiller oar, and that was lashed fixed. Still, the ark did move; it moved — as Liam observed, having for that purpose tossed a chip overboard — at a good pace. It seemed, then, that the ark had gotten into an ocean current, a mer-stream, and that old Gaspar knew enough about it to be quite confident as to where it was taking him, and at what speed, and for how long. Whence it was a reasonable assumption that eventually the mast would go up and the sails, too; and then, though not necessarily at once, the oars.

Liam had a strong sentiment that, in some things at least, Father Gaspar was, indeed, and literally, a Knower.

The sea had long since come to seem to him the natural element; memories of the land behind receded; the land (or lands) before remained as yet but unformed hopes. He watched the sun plunge into the sea, a descent so much more swift than the long, slow sunsets of his lost northern homeland. The luminous washings of the night waves seemed now merely proper and familiar and no more, no longer sinister. Something was happening to the forms of the star-clusters; he wished now with all his heart that he had taken thought to make a map of the constellations long before now; but it was not too late… he could ask the Father Knower for sketching materials tomorrow; if they were refused (or, a likelier negative, smoothly and reasonably declined), he would manage to improvise them somehow.

His mind was filled with this as he sat on deck with Cerry, beneath a sort of high chair in which sat a young man who had the lookout watch. And presently they became aware that someone else had joined them. He thought at first it was probably one of his own, the raft people — although with that thought came another: were they still “his own people”? and how many, if any? and which ones? — but before the faint star-gleam and almost equally faint sea-gleam could reveal the lineaments of the face, the accents of the low, soft voice told him it was one of the ark’s people.

“You don’t know… you didn’t, ever, know Serra?”

“I’m sure I never heard of her. Or — him?”

The young man laughed, softly, shyly. The laugh ended abruptly. Someone else had joined them. After a moment: “No… oh… Serra is the place where we used to live.” The name still meant nothing to Liam. But he now knew that the conversation was a clandestine one, that the speaker had for a moment been concerned about the identity of the last arrival, but was now content about it.

“In which direction did Serra lie? And what sort of a place was it?”

A hand was waved vaguely. “Back that way… It used to be a part of — do you know the old names? — of Africa. But we aren’t of the old Serran stock. Before, although I don’t remember it, we lived in Sori. And before that, we used to live in Jari. And before that — But it doesn’t matter. My name is Rickar.”

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 commerical 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.”