James Schmiz - The Witches of Karres

“Yeah, I guess I do!” the captain admitted. He cleared his throat. “It startled me for a moment.”

“Pretty odd, isn’t it?” Goth agreed. “No Empire at all yet, no Uldune! Patham — no starships even! Everybody that’s there is still back on old Yarthe!” Her head tilted up quickly. “Umm!” she murmured, eyes narrowing a little.

The captain had caught it, too. Vatch sign! Old Windy was somewhere around. Not too close, but definitely present… They remained quiet for a minute or two. The impression seemed to grow no stronger in that time. Suddenly it was gone again.

“Giant-vatch, all right!” Goth remarked a few seconds later. “Brother! You picked yourself a big one, Captain!”

“They’re not all the same then, eh?”

“Come in all sizes. Bigger they are, the more they can do. That’s mostly make trouble, of course! This one’s a whale of a vatch!” She frowned. “I don’t know…”

“They can read our minds — human minds, can’t they?” asked the captain.

“Lot of them can.”

“Can they do it from farther away than we can rell them?”

“Not supposed to be able to do it,” said Goth. “But I don’t know.”

“Hmm — is there such a thing as a klatha lock that will keep vatches from poking around in your thoughts?”

“Uh-huh. Takes awfully heavy stuff, though! I don’t know how to do that one. There’s only three, four people I know that use a vatch lock.”

“Oh?” said the captain, somewhat startled. Goth looked up at him questioningly, then with sudden speculation. “Ummm,” she said slowly. She considered a moment again, remarked, “Now there’s something I do that works about as good as a lock against vatches. Can’t tell you how to do that either, though.”

“Why not?” he asked.

Goth shrugged. “Don’t know how I do it. Born with it, I guess. Takes just a little low intensity klatha. Dab of it on anything particular I don’t want anybody to know I’m thinking about, and that’s it! Somebody sneaks a look into my mind then, he just can’t see it.”

“You sure?” the captain asked thoughtfully.

“Ought to be! Some real high-powered mind-readers tried it. Wanted to study out how it was done so others could use it. They never did figure that out — but it works just fine! They couldn’t even tell there’d been anything blurred.”

“That will be a help now,” the captain said.

“Uh-huh! Vatch isn’t going to find out anything from me he shouldn’t know about.” She cocked her head, looking up at him. “ Did you make yourself a vatch lock, Captain?”

“I think so.” He gave her a general description of the process. Goth listened, eyes first round with apprehension, then shining. “Even when I thought directly at it,” he concluded, “it didn’t seem able to read me.”

“That is a vatch lock then. A vatch lock! ” Goth repeated softly. “You’re going to be a hot witch, Captain — you wait!”

“Think so?” He felt pleased but there was too much to worry about at present for the feeling to linger. “Well, let’s assume that when we can’t rell the vatch, we can talk freely,” he said. “And that when we do rell it, we’d better keep shut up about anything important but needn’t worry about what we’re thinking… But now, what can we do? We’ve got the Venture but there’s no sense in flying around space three hundred thousand years from our time. There’s nowhere to go. Is there any possible klatha way you know of we might use to get back?”

Goth shook her head. Some witches had done some experimentation with moving back in time, but she hadn’t heard of anyone going back farther than their own life span. The vatch must have used klatha in bringing them here; but then it was a giant-vatch, with immense powers.

It looked as if they’d have to depend on the vatch to get them back, too. It was not a reassuring conclusion. The klatha entity was playing a game and regarded them at present as being among its pieces. It had heard that there seemed to be no way to overcome Moander in his stronghold on Manaret and was out to prove it could be done. At best it would consider them expendable pieces. It might also simply decide it had no further use for them and leave them where they were. But as long as the synergizer remained in their custody, they could assume they were still included in the vatch’s plans.

It wasn’t a good situation. But at the moment there seemed to be nothing they could do to change it.

“Olimy found the synergizer and should have been on his way to Karres with it when the Nuris nearly caught him,” the captain observed reflectively. “About the same time it was reported the Empire was launching an attack on Karres, and Karres disappeared. There was no word it had showed up again anywhere else before we left Uldune.”

Goth nodded. “Looks like they knew Olimy was coming with the thing and went to meet him.”

“Yes… at some previously arranged rendezvous point. Now, you once told me,” the captain said, “that Karres was developing klatha weapons to handle the Nuris and was pretty far along with the program.”

“Uh-huh. They might have been all set that way when we left,” Goth agreed. “I wasn’t told. They weren’t far from it.”

“Then the synergizer actually could have been the one thing they were waiting to get before tackling the Worm World. They’d know from their contacts with the Lyrd-Hyrier it wouldn’t be long before Moander had so many more Nuris to fight for him that reaching him would become practically impossible…”

Goth nodded again. “Guess they’ll hit Manaret whether they get the synergizer or not!” she remarked. “Looks like they have to. But if they were waiting for it they got a way to use it — and they’d still want it bad, and fast!”

The captain scowled frustratedly.

“Even if we were back in our time,” he said, “and on our own — meaning no vatch around — the best we could do about it would be to get the thing to Emris! We don’t know where Karres is. And we don’t know where Manaret is… even though I’ve been there now, in a way.”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Goth told him. “Maybe we do know where they are, Captain.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You said Cheel told you the Nuris were putting up new space barriers between the dead suns all around Manaret—”

The captain nodded. “So he did.”

“Never heard of but one place where you’d see dead suns all around,” Goth said. “And that’s in the Chaladoor — the Tark Nembi Cluster. There’re people who call it the Dead Suns Cluster. It’s another spot everyone keeps away from because when you don’t, you don’t come back. So the Worm World could have been sitting inside it all the time… And if it’s there,” Goth concluded, “we ought to be able to find Karres about one jump from Tark Nembi right now.”

The captain grunted. “I bet you’re right — and that could be our solution! If we get back and can make a break for the Cluster on the Sheewash Drive without being stopped by the vatch, we’ll give it a try!”

“Right,” said Goth. “Looks like the vatch will have to move first, though.”

“So it does,” agreed the captain. “Well—” He sighed. “You say you set up camp with Vezzarn and Hulik around here?”

Goth came to her feet. “Just a bit behind the rise,” she said. “Quarter-mile. Let’s go get them — easier than moving the ship.”

Halfway up the slope they turned aside to pick up some items she’d dropped when she caught sight of the captain — a sturdy handmade bow and a long quiver of tree bark out of which protruded the feathered shafts of arrows. Beside these articles lay a pair of freshly killed furry white-and-brown animals tied together by their hind legs. The captain lifted them while Goth slung bow and quiver over her shoulders. “Dinner, eh?” he said. “Didn’t take you long to get set up for the pioneering life!”