Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

Liam said, “They have, in a way, yes. This… this armor… on the outside — this is their bone. But as to the rest, I am in full agreement with you: okh! ” He carefully pried and scraped. They had to use exceeding care, but they were infinitely hampered by their ignorance of the alien anatomy.

“If we had the time,” he said, “and if we had a vessel big enough, we might boil them like lobsters.” He grimaced and grunted, went on with his digging. They were not so much skinning these cadavers as excavating them. “This is one sort of armor which must have a chink in it…”

He wished that the three vigorous guanaco-hunters from the Uplands were here with them now. It had been the sight of the drove of llamas which had started the quick train of thought which led to guanacos, “cousins” to llamas; and simultaneously to what Lehi, Nephi, and Moroni had said about their methods of hunting the wary and wind-swift cameloids. Experienced in this technique, the Uplanders would be very useful in this present and dangerous enterprise… were they but here. But they were not; and there was no time to fetch them here.

Wind sounded and sighed in the trees, the surf (now unvexed in its timeless, ceaseless motion once again) murmured, and Liam and Tom, with teeth clenched and jaws set, worked at their grisly task. And at last they had done the brute and greater part of it; now came the part of more cunning and craft. Cords of sinews were threaded through and inserted and fastened, sticks put into place, the crossbows themselves — vertical — acting as excellent frames and braces. And then—

“Who’s to go inside?” Lors asked, eyeing the rude, quick jobs of taxidermy with a mixed air of admiration, doubt, caution, and impatience.

“I, not,” Liam grunted. “For I must have fully free movement of head and eyes to look all about and see what’s to be seen. Let the three of you choose amongst you.”

He had stripped before beginning work and so had only his hair and beard and skin to wash, squatting in the small pool left to dry up gradually when the brook had been ripped untimely from its accustomed bed. They had none of the coarse soap along with them; he ripped up grass and wadded it and scrubbed, then he scooped up sand and scrubbed, wincing, but nonetheless grateful that the abrasion removed the thickened, gummy ichorous exudations from his skin and hair. It should not have taken them long to choose, and, since Tom did not come to join him in the pool, he assumed that Tom had lost the choice; he was right.

Prepared as he was for what he saw, still he started at the sight: Two Kar-chee, erect and towering (but stooping a bit as was their way) over Lors, who — on seeing Liam stop and stare and then come on — assumed the stunned and hang-head look he evidently believed appropriate to a captive. And Liam, once into his clothes again, and thinking the other’s manner was right enough, assumed it, too. The pair started off, and, behind them, heads bobbing a bit, extra legs dragging a bit, from time to time uttering muffled exclamations, came Tom and Duro, concealed inside the armored skins of the dead Kar-chee.

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—