Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

Skai, a pale-faced and scant-bearded man, standing next to Liam, said, “Makes sense. Makes sense. Wouldn’t you say, Liam?”

Liam said, “It makes sense of a sort. But there’s more than one sort of sense… wouldn’t you say, Skai?”

The man blinked, mumbled wordlessly. After a while, Liam noticed, he wasn’t standing next to him any longer. He was up front, crowding close, listening to Lej. And nodding… nodding… nodding.

A sheltered and concealed cove was found for the ark, and Gaspar directed her putting in to there. The vessel was warped in quite close to shore, the depth of the water there permitting it; and then Gaspar, in whom common sense was never totally obscured by either verbiage or dogma, directed that leafy branches be cut and placed over the topside of the vessel. More: he had them changed daily, as soon as they began to wilt. Perhaps he might have preferred not to tarry at all, but there were many things inducing him to stay a while. So he carefully camouflaged his vessel and began to see to those things.

Shelters were set up ashore for the ill, both of the ark- and the raft-group. (Work of proselytizing among the latter proceeded apace, a captive audience being in Gaspar’s view the best audience of all.) The ark itself was overhauled, repaired, refurbished. A part of the livestock was taken ashore, turn and turn about, to be grazed. Meat was killed and fish caught and both salted, dried, smoked — but a portion of kill and catch consumed as part of the daily rations. Ebbing supplies were renewed. The disrupted state of local society had almost destroyed the opportunity for regular trade, but the Knowers managed to procure what they wanted nevertheless.

And all the while they preached their message — vigorously, urgently, persuasively, incessantly.

And not without success.

Yet, curiously — and whether old Knower Gaspar noticed or not, it seemed to make no difference to him — his campaign seemed to be a two-edged blade. On the one hand, he drew many to him. On the other hand, he pushed many away. Some there were who had been willing to lie down and die who now arose and with all vigor engaged in scrutinizing their past deeds and prepared to repent and to migrate. Others there were who had been in the same comatose condition who now recovered and rejected not only their previous condition but the doctrinal preaching which had aroused them from it.

“What does he mean, Devils are only a switch to beat us?” demanded Jow. “Did anyone ever see a switch move around by itself? These Knowers — how many places have they moved to? So many, most of them don’t know, themselves. They ever convert any place— really convert it — so good that it stayed converted, so that no Devils ever came there? It’s plain that they didn’t.”

Jow, apparently, was going to be a hard nut to crack. If, indeed, he cracked at all.

Some of the raft-people, minds still afire with reflected memory of the destruction wrought in New North Britland, wanted nothing but to keep as far away from Kar-chee and dragon as they could. They took it for granted that Liam, having led them in on migration to safety, would certainly not stay behind after the next one. Others had second thoughts. Devils had been defeated once back in the old home land in the northern seas. Chop it and change it as one would, that fact remained. Which was reducible to a very simple formula: The Devils could be defeated . Liam, to these, was not a man who had fled from the folly of further resistance; he was the very leader of resistance, his wisdom being only further enhanced by having realized — concerning a second stand to fight back there and then — that the time had not yet been right . Liam, to these, was only waiting for the time to became ripe and right. This might be after the next migration; on the other hand, it might come right here — in which case, of course, there would be no migration… at least not for them. Let the proud-nosed old Knowers move where they pleased.

And all the while the proud-nosed old Knowers bent to their tasks, from preaching their word to pouring melted deer fat into dried deer bladders — dutiful, efficient, coordinate; and all the very while rebellion simmered below the surface. It took the form of advocating the blasphemy of resistance to Devils, but it might have taken another or other forms. Once, in ultra-ancient Byzantium, at a time when religion and chariot-racing were the national preoccupations, each faction in the church had had a corresponding faction in the hippodrome; historians had tended to believe that those who supported the chariots of the greens did so because they were Monophysites: but it might well have been that those who supported the doctrines of the Monophysites did so because they were Greens. So perhaps it was here. The younger and rebellious among the Knowers may perhaps have most resented, say, the ban on “unqualified” cohabitation — or the earnestly endless solemnities of their elders — or the fact that they themselves were tired of being reproved for levity — or, excluded from making any but the most minor decisions.

But it was not such terms that Rickar used when he and Fateem and Cerry, Lors, Liam and a few others found themselves together and unobserved one middle morning. Their official mission there was the bringing down of a supply of choice seed-corn from a granary high up above the uncultivated thickets. When people are determined to be together for any reason the events of life lose much of their casual nature and occur only either to gather or to separate them. So it was now. The mission was a chance to be free of being overlooked and overheard. It was seized upon.

The llamas would much rather have been allowed to remain loose to gambol and nuzzle and dance about, and did not submit without protest to having the panniers laden onto them. Up the trail they all went, lighter of heart than any of them might have been willing to admit.

Lors said, almost as though the words were unsafe, “We haven’t seen anything more of the Devils since you came. I think it was a lucky thing for us that you did.”

Rickar, determinedly grim, said, “It may be luckier for us… for some of us, anyway.”

“I think that Father Gaspar is right in one thing, anyway,” Liam considered. “It’s better to keep away from them, generally speaking, than not to keep away from them.”

Rickar grunted, probably annoyed to think that his father could be right in anything. Cerry was thinking that it was a relief to be away from the eternal self-righteousness of the arkfolk. She looked down to where the vessel lay harbored, but only undisturbed greenery met her eye. Gaspar had seen to the work of concealment well. She said so.

Fateem shook her head of soft, brown curls. Everything about her was small and clear and, somehow, managing to seem at the same time delicate and sturdy. “Conceal,” she said, bitterly. “Hide. Run. Preach.”

She flung up her head and looked at Rickar. “Why do we stay?” she asked. “We don’t have to. When the ark, when all the arks, are ready to leave, why don’t we just stay behind?”

He was more than startled, he was shocked. In a moment he seemed to have withdrawn, not only from what she had just said, but also from everything which he himself had said. He half-turned to look back down at where the ark was concealed, then quickly looked back, embarrassed. His eyes met no one’s. “That’s a rather big decision to make,” he said, in an uncertain, unhappy voice. Then, a satisfactory answer to her question occurring to him, he looked up and said with more assurance, “It will be a while before anything can be ready to go. That gives us a lot of time to think about it… Anyway, we’ve got this seed corn to load. It’s very different from our Serran-type of corn, isn’t it, Fateem?”