Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

Deprived of one subterranean passage by the quakes and crashes, the Kar-chee still had another one and still their engines toiled into and within and out from it. Despite all of Liam’s skepticism, the sight of those flickering flame-shadows and the recollection of those blasts of heat and the hot-steamy ocean-muddy smell brought to his mind an unwanted speculation: that perhaps the several Hells of which the oldmothers had prattled and nattered had a counterpart somewhere here below… And, as before and elsewhere, great armored engines crawled and humped themselves along this route until they, too, vanished from sight.

“There,” said Lors, slightly inclining his head to indicate direction; “there are the things which we saw in the sky at night before the ark came. Those great black things — with thunder and lightning — What are they, Liam? Do you know? And how did they get here? And what is being done to them?”

Equally low-voiced, Liam said, “I think that they must be the things the Devils came in… a sort of, well, ship … that rides the air instead of the water. I don’t know how. There must be a huge passage into this place from above to below. Here is the Kar-chee headquarters, no doubts of that. And here they are repairing the damage done by the quake. Here they are… and here we are. And now, what are we going to do?”

“Look for Rickar?”

“Yes… we came here for that. He’s not down below on the bottom, as near as I can see. Where, then? It’s possible, I suppose, though I hope not, that they might have killed him before bringing him here — didn’t bring him here at all, I mean. But somehow I doubt that. No… And clearly they’re in no mood for games down there right now. But — when they’re done—

“So. If not there, where?”

Suddenly he began to whistle, and he went on whistling. There was no reaction from any of the Kar-chee, either down below or anywhere on the winding ramp. Possibly the noise of the repair-work at the bottom masked the sound down there. But it must surely be audible for quite a distance and at levels far enough removed from the mechanical noises. Quite possibly the sound simply conveyed nothing to them. It was unlikely that any human had ever before deliberately undertaken to whistle in the presence of Kar-chee; it was, after all, an occupation inseparable from leisure and from peace of mind. Or it might be that the sound was not registerable on their auditory equipment… whatever that might be like, and if indeed they had any. Just as there were sounds which dogs and other beasts could hear but humans could not, so it might be that this particular sound made by and hearable by humans was simply not hearable by the Kar-chee.

Now and then some one or two of the Kar-chee bent on errands of their own looked up or down or across the great pit at them and fixed gaze upon them for a while; but it was never a long while. In a moment the gaze passed on, and so did the Kar-chee. For all that he could observe to the contrary, Liam’s hope and scheme that other Kar-chee would merely assume that he and Lors were captives of the two supposed Kar-chee behind them was working out so far.

It had gotten them a good way into the enemy camp. But whether it would help fulfill their mission there and get them all out safely again remained to be seen.

Lors said, “Stop.”

It seemed to Liam that he could hear a faint, shrill sound far away upon the close air. Whence had it come? From the corridor whose doorway they had just passed? Or from elsewhere? Liam started on again down the ramp.

Duro said, “Stop.”

His voice was muffled by the concealing carapace. He had moved so that he was facing across the pit. A Kar-chee was there, facing them. His chirring and clicking was only faintly audible, but if that and the precise meaning of his gesticulating was incomprehensible, the direction in which he was gesturing was not. Back , the gestures indicated. Up — back—

Liam said a word or two. The four of them exchanged places, reversed directions, proceeded up and back the way they had come, entered the doorway they had passed before. The other Kar-chee proceeded on his way with the same deliberate pace as before.

There was only a doorway, there was no door. Whether this was usual or not Liam could not say. There had been doors and more than one door, in fact, in that glimpse of the deep-driving undersea caverns. But no door on any corridor here. As for the gaunt, black Kar-chee castles which legends place here and there in far lands, legend did not report on any man who had returned to speak in detail on the subject of doors.

The hallway wound down and around as well, through on a lesser incline than the main ramp, and it smelled mustily of Kar-chee and it was lit in the same odd fashion as all their other habitations; Liam wondered if this might be due not only to differences in mechanics but to difference between Kar-chee and human eyesight… and he wondered, rather more pressingly, if the Kar-chee who had gestured them hither had done so because he had seen through the disguise and was calmly sending them to somehow their death, or because—

Lors had said Stop and Duro had said Stop but Liam now merely held up his hand and held it out, holding the others back. Not far ahead, but hidden from sight by the curving corridor, a single Kar-chee “spoke.” Another one, sound just perceptibly different, “answered.” Then the first one replied… or at any rate “spoke” again. There was a groan, in the midst of which the second Kar-chee resumed his speaking. The strange dialogue continued, thus, intermittently. But there was not another groan. Liam’s hands made swift motions. And things began to move.

He and Lors helped, as quickly as they could — unfamiliar task — Duro and Tom to wriggle and squirm out of the Kar-chee carapaces. They emerged, ichorous and odorous and with faces indicating pleasure at being out and loathing at having been in. The cross-bows, which had served as framework to hold the upper parts of the scarecrows in place, were next extracted, and Liam pulled off his shirt for a rag to clean them — quickly and hastily and not totally effectually, but well enough, so that the cord was not likely to slip or the bolt to stick.

Then the four of them went on… Tom and Liam first, propping one of the Kar-chee-things up and holding it up and holding it so that it projected ahead of them. It was not an easily performed task, and they went on slowly, slowly… slowly…

It was not too hard to conjecture the feelings of two men, conversing together, if suddenly the head and upper torso of another man came into sight round the bend of a corridor — head drooping, torso at a probably impossible angle — and then, equally suddenly, vanished from sight again. The men who witnessed this might have thought… anything. But it is reasonably sure that, think what they might, part of their natural reaction would be to go and see what—

And thus did the Kar-chee.

The first one came into full and almost immediate view, incautiously, and, as it turned out, almost immediately fatally: Duro, to whom first shot had been assigned, caught it with a bolt which pierced an eye and emerged through the top of the brain pan. The second showed himself just as the first was falling, took in enough of the scene to be warned, and withdrew — but not quite soon enough. They were never sure just where the second bolt had pierced this one, so swiftly had it turned and tumbled, threshing about; they did not pause to find out, but flung themselves upon it, knives in hand, seeking for the soft and unprotected hidden places in the chitin, the chinks in the armor; trying all the while to avoid the blows of the huge and murderous-looking anterior fore-limbs.