Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

“Then the ships,” said Lors, thoughtfully, “are their weak spot. Maybe their weakest…”

“Until they get them fixed. Then they might well be their strongest.”

Tom seemed to struggle with an unfamiliar idea; he turned to Rickar, as though forgetting that Rickar had been tacitly deemed to be outside the discussion. “The ark people… the Knowers… you can manage big ships. Do you suppose that you could manage these big Devil-ships?”

Lors looked at him almost scornfully, Duro gave a Huh? of surprise, but Liam—

Rickar, to everyone’s surprise, answered, “I don’t see how. Ours go by wind or oars and these have engines. Ours go on the water and these others go on the air. No… no…”

Tom winced his disappointment. “Oh. Too bad… I was thinking that if you could, if any of us could, then we could go just anywhere at all and alert the men in every place, and then—”

“If we could manage their ships we might be able to wipe them out, Devils of both kinds, all by ourselves,” Lors said, impatiently.

But Liam looked at Tom and his head slowly rose and slowly fell and, slowly, slowly, he nodded to himself.

As zealously as the Kar-chee had toiled to repair their own ships, so the Knowers, old and new, now toiled to repair theirs. Rickar’s appearance at first produced no disturbance in the toil and labor; some did not look up to see him, others had never known who he was, some had forgotten that he had been missing, some now merely assumed that there was no truth to the report of his having been gone, others—

But one came forward now, with a cry of joy, her gaunt face transfigured, her worn hands raised and wavering: Mother Nor.

“My son, my son! I knew it, my son; I knew it! Your father could not look at you and not yearn to help and save you — ah, no…” She caressed his face as he stood there before her; and now others began to gather around them — none actually leaving off the work of repair, but many pausing en route from having laid a burden down. “You were wrong, you and your friends were of course wrong: Gaspar knows that, who does not know that — but he was willing to harrow Hell for you!” Her eyes searched among the thronging people, brimming with tears and confidence. “Your father? Gaspar? Where has he gone to?” And her glance came back to her son and her face changed, suddenly, terribly.

“What has happened to him?”

Her voice was a scream. Rickar shuddered, his body jerked and trembled. His mouth opened but only uncouth clicks and barks came forth from it. His limbs twitched, his head sat stiffly to one side and the horrible and lipless grin returned to his face. A murmur of dismay and fright went through the crowd. And still Rickar remained incapable of coherent speech.

And so it was left to Liam to speak for all of them. He sighed very deeply. “Mother Nor,” he said, after a moment, “things are not as you suppose. Gaspar didn’t follow us to rescue Rickar from the Devils, but to drive him back to them! Oh, Mother—

“Is it possible for you to consider — not to accept, that may be asking too much — but just for a moment to consider the possibility that the Kar-chee have other functions besides that of being Devils in regard to sinful mankind? Just make-believe for a moment… can you do that? Make believe that the Kar-chee are living creatures like we are and that they have come here for a purpose of their own which hasn’t got anything to do with us — neither with us here nor any other men or women anywhere else. Make believe, pretend that it isn’t to punish that they’ve come here, but on a purpose which would be the same if we had all died long ago…”

He had to credit her, for she did make the effort to imagine it; he could see her doing so. That something extraordinary was going on, this she realized, and so for the moment she not so much abandoned her faith but stood, as it were, a bit outside and apart from it. Her thin lips moved, she still caressed her son’s tormented face, and she asked, “And what would this pretended purpose be?”

Liam said, “We saw them down below in a great cavern drilling into the rock and taking out parts of the rock and washing these parts after they’d been crushed; and the way in which this was done, Mother, was the same way in which I’ve seen the men called miners working the rock and soil in my old home land on those parts of it which were raised up from the sea in the old, old days when the rest of it had been sunk beneath the sea. Washing it to see if it contained metallic traces enough to justify mining on a regular scale. All over the world, from all I’ve heard, are found evidences of mining which was done on a great scale; and it might seem, metal being now so scarce and rare with us, that this whole world has been mined out. But even after a carcass has been stripped of meat and the meat eaten and even after the bones have all been gnawed, still, you know, inside the bones is the marrow.

“And if hunger is deep enough and teeth and jaws are strong enough, the bones will be cracked and crushed and then the bones will be sucked for the marrow they contain…

“I believe this to be true, but I ask you only to pretend that it might be true: that the Kar-chee have come here from someplace else, hungry and sharp of teeth and strong of jaw, to crack the bones of this earth of ours and to suck them dry of marrow. Only the marrow they seek is not really marrow, it is metal! Can you, if only for a moment, imagine this?”

The crowd muttered. Mother Nor compressed her forehead. A moment passed, She said, “And therefore—?”

“And therefore, Mother, therefore all of these great and monstrous engines which we have seen below—” He described them, turning to Lors and Duro and Tom for confirmation of what they had seen as well as he. “—These things are for mining, Mother. The Kar-chee have come here to mine. They dig deeply because only in the deeps and depths are rocks worth mining to be found. The sinking of lands, the raising up of other lands, all these are for no other purpose except as they connect with mining operations. The effect of all this on mankind is coincidental; as far as the Kar-chee are concerned, mankind is beside the point. They have not come with the intention of making us suffer, but if we suffer as a result of their coming, that is no concern of theirs. If we stay, they are indifferent; if we flee, they are indifferent. On only two levels, Mother, do they take cognizance of us at all—

“One, is if we menace or seem to menace them: they strike back. It is perhaps only natural. We have nothing in common except life and death and a desire to occupy the same space; we cannot communicate, our species with their species. And so what else is there to do, if one strikes out at or seems likely to strike out at the other, except to strike back?

“I’ve said that this is natural. Not ‘good’—‘ natural .’

“But there’s another level on which they interest themselves in us, Mother, and this seems to me less natural, in the sense that it is less inevitable. They sometimes use us for their sport .

The older woman’s face changed; in a low voice she said, “My child, you babble.”

Lors took a deep breath and shook his head. He seemed ten years older than the stripling who, a short while ago, had had no greater concern than hunting a deer or lying with a girl. The soft lines had gone from his face, his voice was deeper and harsher, his movements at the same time more cautious and more emphatic. “He isn’t babbling at all, Moma,” he said, straightforwardly. “We’ve all seen it. We can’t forget it. That’s what’s bothering your son, I’m afraid. Have you ever seen a cat playing with a mouse or with a very young rat? Is that really play? Isn’t it a kind of punishment, too? The cat gives pain and gets pleasure. And in the end, no matter how long it takes, the smaller creature dies.