Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

And in the night-time, Cerry wept.

Rickar awoke to hear her sobbing. “Are you ill?” he asked, raising himself on an elbow. “Have you a pain?” She shook her head, her face concealed in her hands. “Then what’s wrong?”

But all she would say was, “Liam! Liam!”

And after a while she fell silent and turned her back. So Rickar sighed and blinked his eyes and then Duro was jogging him and beckoning him to follow. Daylight filtered in, dimly, below. He followed him, wondering, waiting for the boy to speak, but all he did was stop and face against a wall. “Well?” Rickar asked, after a moment. “What’s the matter?”

“Matter?” Duro asked, over his shoulder. “Don’t you Knowers have bladders, too?”

“Oh,” Rickar said, blankly. A mildly insistent internal pressure supplied the answer. “Yes,” he said, “we do. Uh… yes… thanks.”

“No fee to guests. Sleep well?”

“ I did, yes. Except when Cerry woke me up. She was crying. You didn’t hear her? I thought not. Wouldn’t say what was wrong.”

Duro adjusted his breech-clout. “Well,” he said, cheerfully, “that was your opportunity. You should have blown out the lamp and taken her into your arms and kissed away her fears. Oh well. Crying, hmm. Too bad. Probably had a bad dream. You all finished? Then let’s get back before she wakes up and gets scared all over again.” He started back, nodding his head sagely. “No accounting for dreams, you know. No accounting for them.”

In after ages there came to be much marvel at the technology of the Kar-chee. But there could never have been much marvel at their technology of what an earlier age would have called “security”—except, perhaps, to marvel at the almost complete absence of it. Yet this was not without reasonable cause. Just as there are organisms who cannot digest anything which has not been already partly pre-digested by decay, so the Kar-chee’s social-scientific organism could digest no planet which had not been already partly pre-digested by decay. Hence they picked none for their attention which had not already been either abandoned or as close to it as made no matter of difference. In such cases there was little or no capacity for resistance by the few remaining inhabitants. A man, in the days when men had still been scanty upon the surface of their own mother-world and still exploring newly-found portions of it, might have been clawed by a bear or nipped by an owl, but he did not think that the owls or the bears were resisting . And no matter how many such accidents or incidents occurred, it still never came into the mind of man to establish a system of “security” against owls or bears..

It was the notion of Lors and of Liam to pick their way cautiously through the honeycomb of caves and come out high up on the other side, where they might be able to peer down, seeing without being seen; and even, perhaps, at night, creep down with infinite caution and spy about the outskirts of the enemy camp. What happened was rather different, of course.

None of them had ever had personal experience of any engine or device more complex than a loom or a wine- or oil-press. The meaning of what lay far below them there on the floor of the vast cavern was thus largely hidden from them. An infinity of lights, a multitude of great black cabinets (so they thought of them), a profusion of moving parts, odd noises, hummings, buzzings, shrill-high batlike squeakings, rumblings… sounds for which they had no names. Kar-chee came and went, bound on tasks which — concerned as they must have been with the machinery — were meaningless to the unobserved observers. There were no dragons immediately below, but at the opposite end of the cavern, a good distance off, there were a number of them, milling slowly about.

To Cerry, what was going on below made no more sense when she last looked at it than when she first looked at it. Except for the presence of the Devils, it simply was not something to be comprehended. But with Liam it was otherwise. His eyes roamed slowly and systematically over the entire area, back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down. Again and again. Again and again. And so, gradually, line upon line, principle upon principle, here a little and there a little, something of what was going on below began to fall into a sort of a sequence and to make a sort of a sense to him.

There was a continual flashing of blue points, a rushing of waters, crashing percussions, dust, a flow of crushed rocks in moving paths, Kar-chee bending and stooping and rising, the air shuddering, the solid stone shuddering.

But, now, as he looked and looked, he began to believe that although all this was going on simultaneously, all the these which made up the this were going on separately. He perceived repetitions, from the repetitions he perceived sequences, and from the sequences he derived causes and effects. As yet he could not in any manner understand purpose. But that might yet come. It might yet. He inched forward yet another little bit, and stared intently, trying to isolate a sequence and follow it through from start to stop.

A great serpent of metal mesh and joints reared itself up, extending and extending, stretching and stretching, rigid where it had been flaccid, its head all monstrous gears and metal beak. At a height higher than that of ten men standing on each other’s shoulders, the head struck. Plates fell into place, protecting the gears as the beak imbedded itself in the rock. And bit. And burrowed. The head vanished; the “neck” stretched and extended. Dust and new-made sand, like dry dribble, came from the orifice. The head withdrew. The plates opened. The monstrous beak sank down… down… The body withdrew into itself, turning, serpentine, retreating across the floor of the cavern. And at length it paused by a Kar-chee and, in a movement which made Liam, watching, shudder, so closely did it counterfeit life and affection, it raised its head to the Kar-chee and the Kar-chee lowered a monstrous arm and laid its hand upon the monstrous head.

But this curious simulation lasted but a second. The Kar-chee hands contained implements, which removed the beak-drill and placed it in a container; then the Kar-chee hands dipped into another place, came out with one of the curious objects Liam had come to think of as points , and—

But then, far down the immense cavern, a section of wall slid away, revealing an immense corridor leading off into obscurity and fitfully illuminated with reddish light like the reflection of enormous fires, and from this emerged a blast of heat which made the humans fight for breath. Out and up from this inferno crawled a long and armored Something on many clanking feet; mud and water dripped from it. Behind it, very far behind it, a door slid shut. And before that, another. And another. Another…

It was as though there lay something very strong and dangerous far below there, which had to be caged and fenced and walled away…

The Kar-chee, all of them, looked up and paused in their doings and walkings and watchings. Farther away, the dragons did the same, lifting their heads up and some even rearing on their hind legs. All turned, all regarded. Something of greatmost importance seemed imminent.

But what this might be, Liam could not know. He could suspect, however, and his suspicion turned his courage into terror. But not for long. The greater and nearer the danger, the sooner and more effectively the quest for knowledge must be accomplished. He returned his intent gaze to the glittering and flashing blues… his eye and his attention had been caught by them at the first. In terms of language with which he was not familiar it could perhaps have been said that his subconscious mind had made an important discovery which his conscious mind had yet to make. Liam did not think in such terms. He knew only that he must now start over again in trying to discover a sequence and trace its progress along its circuit.