Avram Davidson - The Kar-chee Reign

March 2007

v2.0

The Kar-chee Reign

Avram Davidson

THE PLANET SCAVENGERS

It was the distant future of Earth, and the mother planet of a

galaxy-wide empire had been forgotten by her far-flung colonies.

Forgotten, tired, old and stripped of her ores and natural fuels, Earth and

the scattered bands of humans left behind were totally unprepared for the

invasion of the strange, monstrous Kar-chee from the depths of the stars.

The Kar-chee had come to strip Earth of the few natural resources the

planet had left—to crack the marrow of the aged planet and scavenge

whatever of worth was left there. It was a massive, planet-wide operation

in which continents were sunk and oceans drained, and if the tiny,

insignificant humans died in these holocausts, what did that matter to the

Kar-chee?

But it mattered to the humans… and, at last, they began to fight.

contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

THE KAR-CHEE REIGN by AVRAM DAVIDSON

ace double G-574

ACE BOOKS, INC.

Printed in U.S.A.

I

^ »

The big place on the old Rowan homesite had just been freshly

thatched—and what a disturbance of birds, snakes, lizards, mice and

spiders the removal of the previous thatch had caused—but its thick walls

had stood there for generations: scarred and chipped and streaked with

smoke and smeared with grease, but in all, still sturdy. The first Rowan

had built well; he had not come here with his wives and children and his

flocks and herds after the sinking of California, for he had had none of

those. He had in fact landed with one small boat and one small dog and a

determined mind and a hopeful heart, marrying a daughter of the land

(that is to say, he had concluded a major treaty by the terms of which he

granted use of his infinitely precious cold chisel for half a year of every

year and in return was granted use for the whole of every year of an area of

land for building and farming and hunting and fishing, plus a girl who

had been captured almost casually from a far-off people years back and

was of an age to be manned), and had put up his house according to a

plan existing in his own head only—then, unprecedented; since, the

standard model.

He had left behind more than a set of walls and a style in housing. His

long head and long bones and wide, smiling mouth were now part of the

common fabric of the people; his casual, personal turns of speech had

become the way one spoke. If a problem was regarded calmly as

something capable of solution instead of occasion to retreat into dreams

and resigned surrender, this, too, was part of the long legacy of Rowan the

first settler.

The present head of the homesite, old father and artificer, was one Ren

Rowan, six generations descended from the settler on one side and seven

generations removed on another; his wife's lineage was similar, though of

distant cousinship. He was all seamed and grizzled now, she—though

slightly younger—only now beginning to show gray in her long hair. Her

hands were deft at many tasks. It was her way to offer advice to her

husband quietly and in private, it was his—usually—to take it.

"Well, we needn't thatch this roof again for a while," he said to her, she

coming to join him on the bench more to treat him with her company

than because she particularly needed rest from directing the work of

feeding those who had helped with the work.

"Might think of cutting some house timbers," she said, in her soft, slow

voice. Meat sizzled and spat. There was a burst of laughter. A child

stumbled and wailed, was righted and comforted with a grilled bone that

filled the small mouth.

"Might," Ren agreed. "Always might… why now?"

His eyes followed hers to where his youngest son stood in conversation

with a girl on whose hip his hand rested so lightly that one might almost

assume neither of them to know it was there at all. Almost; but not quite.

"Mmm… That seems a flighty girl to me. I suppose she's twitched her

rump at him and now he doesn't know whether to build a house or drag

her off into the bushes… Of course, one needn't preclude the other. Still.

Flighty."

Moma said, "Babies make good ballast. You were on the flighty side,

too, recollect."

"That was before the Devils came," he said mildly.

"Not so long ago as that… Well. House timbers. Might think about it… "

A comfortable silence fell between them. He, his work being officially

over, might have put on the loose shirt and kilt, both decoratively worked

in dyed threads, which she had laid out for the purpose in their room. She,

her work being officially still on, would not yet slip into the equally loose

dress (only the unmarried women need endure the discomfort of tight

ones), equally brightly embroidered, which hung in her corner. Both, then,

were girded briefly around the waist, and wore no other clothing. The

afternoon's sun was still warm.

The moma and popa of Home Rowan looked on and about quietly and

contentedly. The large, sturdy old house with its rounded ends was well-

and newly-thatched; let the rains fall in due season as they surely would

(forfend a drought!), it would not let by a drop. The walling palisade and

gate were solid and well-set, the pens held fat stock and poultry, fields and

garden were in good tilth, and the storehouses were as full as any

homesite's should be that was not niggard with its help. Neighbors,

kinsmen, and even those not so allied had come to help with the work and

were feeding and—depending on age—frolicking or enjoying a peaceful

visit. A potbellied pupdog, descended out of the lean loins of the Settler

Rowan's lone companion on the long voyage hither, nosed along for scraps,

followed by an equally potbellied grandchild. The pupdog paused, spread

its legs, piddled. The child did the immediate same… Startled by the

sudden laughter, he looked up, ready for tears. Seeing only Moma and

Popa, he smiled proudly, and gurgled vigorously as he tottered off in

pursuit of the pupdog.

It hadn't always been a goodly scene. There had been famine, preceded

by droughts; plagues of beasts and plagues of men; there was once

something mightily like a little war; wild beasts had raided and attacked,

and—rarely, rarely—wild men. Floods had lapped almost to the doorsills;

retreating, they had left behind mud and wreckage and bloated bodies. A

favored daughter had suffered of a long and painfully wasting illness

before dying, and a less favored son (perhaps because of that, or for

another reason none could think of) had one day walked down into the

ocean and not come out. Nor had Old Ren, as he was beginning to be

called, inherited the homesite peacefully. His years of enduring the

usurpatous tenure of his wicked and godless uncle, Arno Half-Devil, and

how he had finally wrested all away from him and sent him to die in the

caves, formed the integuments of a legend which was still in formation.

And now, when the minor festivity of the thatch party ordinarily would

be beginning to slow down, it received fresh life. In past the carven blue

gate posts came another party of guests, their cries and gestures as they

saw the new roof firmly in place already expressing a mixture of dismay

and self-reproach and rueful good humor.

Old Ren said, "Jow's people… late because they started late… started

late because they didn't think to come at all. Only coming now because

Jow's got something on his mind that came up on a sudden. Well. Got to

feed them." He rose and prepared to welcome them.

His wife said, "Won't be enough meat. Kill or hunt?"

But he had already gestured his decision to his two younger sons, and

was now waiting for Jow to bring his people and his unhappy face up to

the bench to be welcomed.

Lors, Duro, four or five of young nephews and cousins to beat and help

bear, and one of the just-arrived guests, uninvited, but not thereby

unwelcome—trotted off, hunt-bound. Duro was still young enough to love

hunting next to eating. Lors would much rather have stayed with his hand

on Mia's hip… he would much, much rather have gone with her where he

could put his hand somewhere else… but his father's expression and

gesture were alike unmistakable and undeniable. Guests had to be fed,

there was no ignoring it, and it was up to the popa to decide if stock were

to be killed or if the huntsmen were to go out. The alternatives were

equally honorable to the guests. The fields lay, for the most part, up and

away from the sea. There were deer in the rainier lowlands; guanaco were

to be found only in the highs, well above the fields; and now, as they came

to the fork in the way, they had to decide which it was that they were to

hunt.

"We'd best go down," Lors said, trying to give his words the sound of

judicious reflection. "We can get deer quicker and not delay our guests."

Duro at once countered, seemingly innocently, "And then you can get

back and away quicker, and on top of Mia."

The younger boys laughed; the newcomer smiled. Lors wondered if he

should hit his brother, decided against it for the moment. "I was thinking

only of our guests," he said with dignity. And added, "How do they call

you, guest?"

"Tom-small," said the guest, putting the boys to giggling again. He was

about Lors' own age, and a rather large young man.

"I shouldn't like to have to share a sleeping-hammock with Tom-big,

whoever he is," said Duro. This was an acceptable excuse: Lors hit him.

"No way to talk to guests," he said, righteously.

"He's my uncle," the guest said, unannoyed. "I used to be smaller than

him, but the name sticks…" He looked up the fork to the right, raising his

head toward Mount Tihuaca, only partly obscured by drifting clouds. "I've

never been up there. I've heard… it's said that on a clear day you can see

the ocean on all sides, the whole coastline, from there…" His voice ended

on a vaguely questioning note. He was a diffident, amiable one.

Duro said, "Yes, maybe, but I've never seen the day that was that clear.

There always seems to be at least some part of the coast you can't see."

Lors understood what Tom-small had in mind. "We really do not have

time to go that far today," he pointed out, kindly enough. His eyes were

blue-gray, his hair was long and black, his skin a light brown. "Maybe, if

you stay over, we could make a special trip—" A half-smile of pleasurable,

anticipating assent lit up Tom-small's broad and open face. Lors went on,

"But right now we have to get meat. So: it's downward ho for us. Let me

tell you the plan.

"There's a spring which the deer favor. And we usually set salt there for

them, as a further attraction. The boys will go ahead and around to beat

them back this way—if there are any there now. I'll show you, by and by,

where we crouch for them along their trail. With three bows, we ought to

have luck. Oh! Say—you're all right for hunting, aren't you? I mean, you

haven't touched a corpse or a cat or a fluxy female today, have you?"

Tom-small shook his head. "That's all right, then."

But Duro wasn't sure it was all right. "How about Mia?" he asked. "You

were touching her!"

Lors had forgotten. His heart gave a thump, and the blood ran into,

then away from his face. How could he have forgotten? But after a second

he said, "No, I'm sure it's all right. She knows better; she wouldn't have let

me, if— Besides, Popa saw me. He must think it's all right, too, or he

wouldn't have sent me."

Satisfied, they started off down the down-slope branch of the fork. Far

off below, through a break in the hills, they saw the blue sea. Lors pointed.

"That's where the first Rowan landed," he said.

Tom-small looked impressed. "Before the Devils came," he said.

Duro, looked at him. "How could that be?" he asked. "If the Devils

hadn't come, Rowan would have stayed where he was and not come here."

The young guest looked confused. Then, dismissing the need to figure

the matter out, he said, "Well, anyway, it was a long time ago."

It had been, indeed.

And it had all begun much further ago than that.

Earth had become like a woman who has, after a long and painful labor,

given multiple birth… flat, empty, weary and bare. For the Earth was long

enough over the final wave of outward, star-bound emigrants for the last

trace of concern and excitement in it to have ebbed utterly away. And

there was, it seemed, nothing else.

It had begun calmly enough, this move to the known hospitable worlds

swimming around the distant stars. Mankind had waited long enough to

be patient at first. No one could say at just exactly what point it all

became a frenzy. The Earth went mad; contentedly, controlledly mad…

and stayed so for centuries. For on the one hand there was instant and

continual concern to solve once and for all the old problem of

overpopulation. Those nations which were actually overpeopled—which

was most of them—wanted to make an end at last, forever, to crush and

hunger. The few that weren't did not and could not remain aloof, for they

wanted just as much an end to the fear that the overcrowded countries

would spill out of their borders in war. So all worked intently. The first

wave of migrants wanted just to get away. Their zeal was negative. But it

was nonetheless zeal. Then came those who wanted to claim a share of

what they heard was out there—land, room, opportunity, adventure. Then

came those who wanted just to see for themselves what it was like… they

said. The next wave went to join family and friends. Finally it became

indiscriminately contagious, a roaring wind, sucking up that which lay

behind as well as driving on that which lay before it. Those who toiled in

sending people out were themselves caught up in it and strove to be

themselves sent out. And so, finally, there were comparatively few left

behind.

The long morning had been filled with noise. The long afternoon was

strangely silent. The silence at first was filled with remembered echo.

Earth's remaining people had worked themselves into an unprecedented

fatigue. They had also, it seemed, finally and forever plundered their

planet dry. Scarcely a trace of crude metals remained, and not even a trace

of mineral fuels. The very wastes of the ancient mines had been reclaimed,

reprocessed, redigested and reconsumed. In the last stages, the

technicians had cannibalized their own technology, gobbling up factories

and smelting down fabric and machinery to consolidate and produce the

ultimate ships. The near-empty cities were at last dismantled for their

bones and scrap, ruins ravaged like pigs nosing for truffles.

Finally, no more ships were built on earth and no more migrant parties

sent off. For a while yet, though, the old world Earth stayed in touch with

her children via out-world-built ships touching down with visitors. But

there were never many of them; and as the Earth-born in the outer worlds

grew old and died off, there were ever fewer. So, finally, even they ceased.

There was no announcement, only that the perhaps penultimate one bore

notice, in the form of so few passengers, that the children-planets had

become too caught up in their own concerns to care much about the

withered mother-world.

Yet no doubt habit alone might have served to keep up a

communication with some semblance of regularity. The migrants had

been as careful as they might to purge and to protect themselves against

bringing communicable disease with them as they swarmed out to the

series of worlds which later became known as The Inner Circle. But when

they learned of the presence among them of the deadliest such disease of

all it was too late: it had blazed up, and it was not to die down for

centuries. Its name was War.

And it was then, when all the other worlds of human tenancy were so

pre-empted and preoccupied that the very awareness of the

Earth-Mother-world became only faint memory—less, perhaps, than the

memory of Juteland was to England during her Colonial wars—it was then

that the Kar-chee came. Earth-planet may have seemed sucked dry,

worthless, to those who now lived or whose fathers had once lived on it…

just as the rind and the pulp of a squeezed orange might. But that same

would not seem worthless at all to a pig or a swarm of flies. Nor did it

seem so to the Kar-chee. They left their lairs around the Ring Stars and

swarmed down onto weary, exhausted, riven old Earth, to pick the bones

and crack the plundered planet for its marrow.

The spring and the man-made salt-lick were well set up for hunting, the

arroyo and ravine being so as to provide an almost perfect situation for

ambush. Only the one narrow way led up to the water welling up at the

foot of an abrupt cliff: as the deer went up, so that same way they had to

come down. "Beating" was here not the most exact word—the younger

boys went up to the top of the cliff-face by another and roundabout way

and pelted any deer they might find below with stones and sticks. It was

doubtless not sporting, but this was a conception unknown to them. They

killed what they needed, and no more, and it made sense to kill as quickly

and easily as possible.

Lors and Duro levered down their goat-foot crossbows and loaded them

with a bolt each, Tom-small nocked an arrow into his short straight bow,

and the three of them picked their hiding places among the rocks and

hunkered down.

They could, if need be, maintain the position for hours. But as it turned

out, they had to maintain it for something much less.

From above and ahead, faint but clear, after perhaps a quarter of an

hour, the three heard a series of whistles. Duro got up, swearing. Lors

shrugged. To Tom-small, who looked at them inquiringly, he said, "No

game at the spring. Well, we'll have to go all the way up there to see if

there's anything along the path… and then come all the way down again, if

there is or there isn't."

"Oh, Devil!" said Duro, again.

And there was nothing along the path.

There was nothing along the usual beats, either—no actual game, that

is. There was spoor and trace, to be sure, and these signs made them all

look at each other with faces wrinkled in uncertainty.

"Upland," Tom-small said. "Everything seems to have gone upland… Do

you know why?"

The brothers didn't. "I don't know who'd be beating up from downland

hereabouts," Lors said. "I don't smell any fire, either." Automatically, at

this suggestion, they all sniffed the air. As though to accommodate them

at just that moment the wind shifted.

"What is that?" Duro asked, scowling.

No one knew. It was musty and pungent and utterly strange. It might be

connected with the curious absence of game; it might not. "Let's go see

what it is," said Duro.

Lors shook his head. "Popa didn't send us out for anything but to get

meat, and the meat's all gone upland, it seems, so we just have to go

upland after it. When we get back we can tell him about it, and he'll know

what to do."

"By the time we get back with anything—if we find anything—they'll all

be hungry, anyway," his brother pointed out. He looked windward, made

as though to reload his crossbow.

"The longer we wait and gibble-gabble, the hungrier they'll be. Up," said

the elder. And turned and started. Tom-small and the younger boys

followed at once. So, after a moment, did Duro. They went upland, all of

them, but they came within shot of no game. Once they stopped stock-still

at the sight of three deer outlined upon the top of a ridge, heads all up. For

a moment nothing moved, nothing was heard. Then, far off and below, it

came… deep and distinctive and strange, and it sounded again—the deer

darted off and were gone—and it seemed to have ended upon a higher, a

questioning note.

"It's no horn," guest Tom-small said, low-voiced, evidently answering

his own unspoken questioning.

But as to what it was, none had any suggestion. They nodded when Lors

said, finally, "All game gone upland… nobody beating besides us, that we

know of… a bad smell, a strange smell… and now a strange noise…

"My guess is that whatever made the smell is making the noise. It's

gotten late. We'd better go back and tell Popa, that's the best thing, and

we can kill stock for the guests and then we'd all better find out what this

thing is."

As they started back, Duro said, "Maybe it would be better to find out

as soon as can be, even if it's got to be done on an empty belly." His

brother grunted his agreement. The smaller boys were all silent, and kept

close instead of spreading out. The sun declined away behind the

mountain and the air felt chilly on their skins—and perhaps it was not just

the air

They followed Lors without questioning when he picked a trail over

fallen rock which would cut time off their return. And it was while the

loose shale was still sliding a bit under their feet that they all stopped

short with no more sound at first than the hissing intake of breath and

looked down where his hand pointed and where it trembled despite all his

brave effort.

Along the distant shore below, at that same shelving beach where the

first Rowan had brought his tiny boat ashore, there, outlined against the

wine-dark sea, they saw the forms of two utterly strange and utterly

dissimilar figures stalking across the twilight landscape—one erect,

though slightly stooping; the other on all four giant legs which held it high

above the sand.

Slowly, fearfully, they sank down and spread themselves flat upon the

shale. After an infinity of time the two strange beasts passed out of sight

around a bend in the shore line. Then, crouching, sliding, trotting almost

as they squatted and slid, spraddle-legged, the young hunters vanished

into the safe-promising shadows. And only when the dearly familiar walls

of the homesite, outlined by the vigorous fires still burning outdoors, came

into view did any of them speak. It was the youngest and smallest of the

boys.

"Devil," he said. "Devil." He was not swearing. "Devil-Devil—it was the

Devil!" he chattered.

And Lors said, "Maybe… Maybe… But—which one?"

II

Avram Davidson - The Kar-chee Reign

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