Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

She blew out an angry breath, but made no other answer. Nor did she answer him afterward, either, until, annoyed, he switched his conversation to Cerry. “We saw no such light-haired women as you before we saw you,” he told her; “although we had heard about them. And how red your skin was from the sun! But now you look exceedingly well.”

Lors, from time to time, seemed on the point of saying something, but never did. They filled basket after basket of the thick and twisted ears of corn, so different from the thin and slender ones of the type of Serra, and dumped them into the panniers. Presently they paused to eat and drink, and Liam found himself sitting apart with Fateem under a tree. From time to time Rickar would look up at them, his face an unsuccessful mixture of anger and unconcern; then he would turn to say something to Cerry and laugh.

“These cakes are good,” Liam said. “We didn’t have this corn at all in Britland — just rye and barley and wheat… Come,” he said, “don’t stay angry at your young friend. Give him a chance to adjust to your ideas. Think what it means for him to leave all his family and friends and—”

She burst out, “It should mean no more to him than it means to me!”

“Well… there’s that.”

“He was the first to talk of this among us, and he talked the longest and the most. I was contented, before. I would probably be still contented — believing what I was taught, doing as I was told. Receiving the wise words of the ancient elders, humbly accepting everything. But I can’t, anymore — and it’s all Rickar’s doing! If he wasn’t willing to face leaving the Knowers, why — well, what did he think? ” She sat up, facing Liam indignantly. “Did he think that a miracle would occur? And his father and his mother and all the others would suddenly come around to his way of thinking? — when they haven’t any of them the slightest notion in the world of the things he’s been thinking of! And now for me to find out that it was all just thinking — and all just talk!”

Again, Liam was pacific. “Be patient—” he began.

But this was what she could not be. “No. No. But it’s just as well that it’s happened. I should have known better — I will know better — than to trust a boy!” She threw a fleeting, disgusted glance at the unfortunate lad, then turned her face, alive with indignation and disdain, to Liam again. “But you ,” she burst out—“you are a man!”

“True…”

But he said nothing more; after a moment, she demanded, “Then don’t tell me that you are really going to become a Knower and run meekly off with the rest of them? You’d better not tell me that! I wouldn’t believe it, but I’d hate you for lying to me!”

He took the small hand she had held out to him. “No, don’t hate me,” he said. “I can’t tell you for certain sure, Fateem, what I will do. I rather incline to doubt that good Father Gaspar will be wanting me on his next voyage. And I wouldn’t want you to make up your mind, and make it up not to change it… now… that you’ll be leaving your people so certainly — not on the chance of anything I might be going to do.”

Something like despair came into her golden brown eyes. “Oh, but I thought I might depend on you,” she said, low-voiced. She frowned, slightly. “Is it because of her? Cerry? Because…” She stopped, confused.

He rose, still holding her hand, and pulled her to her feet. “It’s not. You can talk to her as you talk to me. If you want… from me… any more than that, I’m sorry. I don’t speak of forever or for never, but for now. But this I can tell you, Fateem: as I will tell her of what my plans may be, when I have a better way of knowing what my plans may be, so I will tell you. And just as she will be, as she is now, free to decide if she will go or stay, or whatever, so, Fateem, will you.

“And now, let’s go back to our corn. Whatever happens, and wherever it happens, there must be seed to sow.”

It was on the way back that Rickar, carefully not looking toward Fateem, said, in a determined voice, “Liam, what you said about learning more of the Devils—”

And Lors, in a relieved tone: “Ah—!”

None of the party was willing to stay behind with the laden beasts; none wanted even to risk it by drawing straws. So the llamas were “deposited” in a small blind-end barranco and the narrow mouth of it plugged with stones and branches. Then, free, they followed Lors at a rapid pace which soon took them far from the main trail, and after that the pace was no longer quite so rapid. They clambered over fallen trees, scaled boulders hot from the sun, plunged through obstructive thickets; came at last to a sort of slot in the rocky face of the hill through which not more than two of them at a time could look down a long stretch of deep and narrow gorge.

A hawk rode upon the air, floating, rising, falling softly, rising again. “It would be nice if we could do the same,” Liam murmured. Then: “What’s beyond the end, there?”

Lors said, “Wait.” They waited quite a long time, looking at the stretch of empty ground beyond the farther end of the gorge. At length he clutched Liam’s arm. Something which perhaps both of them had assumed to be a tree now detached itself from a shady mass of obscurity and moved across the landscape. They could not see it at all clearly, nor could they see clearly the shapes which followed it. But they could see them move and pass and vanish. It was certain that they were large, certain that they were strange, certain that they could not be trees. Nothing more moved, down and afar off, though they waited a long time further. But at last they felt the breeze in their faces, and the breeze told them that what had been known without proof was indeed true.

Devils!

But they saw nothing more.

Cerry said, “We can’t learn very much about them at that distance, can we?”

“We can’t learn anything at all about them at that distance,” Liam said. “Except that they’re there. Or at least that some of them are there. No—

“Lors, is there a way through? A safe way? Or at least safer?”

“A safer way to what?”

It was not the words of the question which brought them up short, dismayed, nor the tone of voice in which it was asked, for the tone was mild enough. But they were so thunderstruck at seeing Gaspar, the Father Noah, up here that astonishment made them all for a moment mute.

Rickar it was who broke the short silence. “A safer way, in case one should ever be necessary, through to the coast, father… But what brings you here? Is anything—”

“Wrong? No. But it is well to look about on all sides and to know what lies behind as well as before. Indeed, is this not the very motive which inspired the question of Liam? And a good question, too. Is there an answer, Lors Rowan?”

“Not the way we have just been,” Lors said. “But it’s possible that there may be one by other ways. If we might take time out to look…?”

Gaspar stroked his beard and pursed his lips reflectively. He nodded. “Speak to Lej,” he said, after a moment. “He is this week’s Orderer of Schedules… But I see that you are all here. Where, in that case, are the animals? Not unguarded, I hope? And the seed corn? What of that? Lors Rowan’s father’s generosity should not be repaid with carelessness.”

He was somewhat appeased on being shown the effectively-blockaded animals, all comfortably sitting down and ruminating their cuds. Lors took the occasion to deliver a running lecture on the intelligence and habits of llamas, which occupied the rest of the return trip and which (they hoped) effectively prevented the old Knower from entertaining suspicions.