Avram Davidson: The Kar-Chee Reign

Suppose the raft were to encounter flying fish. A whole entire school of them. Then the sail and the awning could be used as nets. Everyone would have something to eat. And then — since flying fish lived in the tropics and in the tropics it was very rainy — then it would rain, and the rain water would be caught in those same sails and awnings. All at once everyone would be better, healthy, alert, in good spirits and humor. Their luck thus once turned, obviously land would be the next thing to appear. Land!

It would be a good land, with friendly people, not savage, neither terrible nor terrified. The land and people didn’t know of hunger, and there were no dragons in that land and neither were there Kar-chee. And… and then…

Cerry wondered what was next, smiling and giving little nods. The bubble did not so much burst as simply vanish; and, the vision forgotten as though it had never begun, she wondered and fretted mildly how long they had all been on the raft. At least a month. She had had her courses just before they’d embarked — a minor discomfort and a common and regular one: odd that she should remember it against the background of that hideous time and trouble — and then, surely, she had had them again at least once since then, aboard the raft. She could not remember it having happened another time. Which meant that it had not been two months yet. Or, possibly, that her body no longer functioned as it once had. Small wonder, if this were so. But what if Liam were dead?

The fear was worse than the pain of finding out. So, slowly and so slowly, Cerry raised herself onto her painful hands and knees and began to crawl and to creep and to climb across the cant of the raft toward the figure which half-sat, half-crouched, in the splotchy shade of the tattered awning. And the gorgeous golden sun beat down unceasingly from the blazing blue of the silent sky. There was a child stretched out, face down, back moving in slight rise and fall of feeble breath. Cerry did not dare stop or try to move other than as she was moving. Neither did the woman move who croaked, “Murderers! Murderers!” as Cerry dragged herself over the child.

“Are you human beings?” the woman demanded. “Or are you dragons? Kill me, kill me, only leave my child alone…” Her, head, at least, at last, commenced to weave from side to side, but by then Cerry was past. “Help, help,” the woman croaked, striking her head with her skeletal paw of a hand. “Human beings: help, help. There are dragons on the raft…” The child gave a ghost of a whimper. “Yes, my darling,” the woman said, instantly sane. “Yes, my precious. Don’t cry, my dearest love. Mother’s coming…” She moved toward the child like a crippled snake.

A hot gust smote the sea. The torn cloth slapped and snapped. The raft shook. A wave hit it; it shook again. Something dead went floating by and someone not quite dead pointed and wept, but it was too far away. Liam had one brown eye and one blue eye and otherwise his eyes were red as blood. His sun-bleached, salt-encrusted hair moved in the light wind like clumps of dirty marsh grass. He didn’t blink or breathe as Cerry came lurching and creeping. “Liam, don’t be dead. Tell me how long it’s been,” Cerry asked. He didn’t blink or breathe. She could see the wind moving the little hairs on his chest, but she couldn’t see the chest move.

She butted his knee with her head, like a lamb forcing its dam to give down milk. He fell over on his side. “Don’t be dead, Liam,” she begged.

After minutes, hours, years, he said something. He made a sort of snoring noise. He said something. “What, Liam? What?”

She crept close. “Maybe a dream,” he said. She listened. She strained to hear. The man who had pointed to the dead thing watched them. He sat up a bit. He watched them. The mother stroked her child’s face. But her eyes did not really watch the child. Her eyes watched them. “May be a dream, Cerry,” Liam said. “But I think I did. One night… I think…”

It had not been a dream. He had. He really had. In the box with the rotting ropes and other gear and tackle, he had really, on that night he half-remembered, secretly and cautiously placed some food — then, when food had still been plentiful and all had been optimistic, for they would soon reach Gal; none had ever been to Gal but all had been sure it was only a week’s voyage away — against the possible time when, if Gal had not been reached, they might well be thankful for the food. And of course they had not in any week’s voyage reached Gal, they did not know now if it were one week or a year of weeks, if winds and currents had carried them forever past it or if Gal itself had been sunk by the Kar-chee. But the food was still there.

It lay in her hands as she brought it up to the surface for long enough for her to see that it was in a bag sewn of soft cloth, part of a dress, and by the feel of it potatoes. Small, gone soft, gone sprouty, but food. “It’s to be divided,” she warned herself softly. “It’s to be divided!” she shrieked as it was torn from her hands. The man who had pointed to the dead thing in the sea and wept because it was too far to secure it for the raft did not weep now, but gibbered and spat and clawed Cerry’s face with his left hand. The bag was torn from his right hand by the woman of the child. “ It’s to be divided! ” screamed Cerry.

And it was divided, though not according to the calm and rational scheme intended. Who would have thought there was still so much life left in them all? So much evil, so much greed? The dead rose up from the deck which was their grave and screamed and growled and fought. They bit the hands which held the shrunken, blackened potatoes, and clawed them up into their own hands. But the woman of the child, when the cloth of the bag ripped and the black manna fell and scattered, did not use her hands to seize. She crawled upon her hands away from the scene, her sunken cheeks full and smiling. She crawled to her child and kissed the child mouth to mouth and chewed for the child and fed it as a bird is fed. The thin, scrannel throat moved, slowly, slowly. When the child smiled at last, the woman, her own mouth now empty of all but love, said, in loving and rapturous tones, “ There , my darling… There , my precious. Did you like that? Was it good?” She composed herself beside the child, carefully arranged some tatters of her dress so as to cover the small face from the shade, and then, still smiling, died.

The man who had pointed to the dead thing in the sea and had wept and then later had snatched the sacket of food wept again. Or so it seemed. Drops flowed down his face, but they were red and he lay still. And more than one looked at him and looked at each other and looked away from each other and then looked back at him. For the few and small bits of provision in the sacket were gone now, but the hunger which had been lying somewhat dulled and anesthetized was wide awake now and gnawing. And the man himself was dead now and he was not at all too far away to be reached.

“ Are you human beings? Or are you dragons? ” one of them had lately asked. And now it might be that none of them was at all sure.

In ravaging and in ravishing their own world for its minerals in order to make the means to abandon that world forever for newer and fresher, richer ones, the men of Earth had carried on — more or less — as they had done for the mere thousands of years in which mining had engaged the attention of their species. The holes they dug were deeper and the pits they scooped were wider and both of course were more numerous. They had left the landscape scarred and fractured, but it was, when they had done with what they were doing, still recognizably the same landscape.