Soul Catcher

by Frank Herbert

  Still in that soft voice, Katsuk said: “Answer to your name when I ask you. What is your name now?”

  “Hoquat.” Sullen, but clear.

  “Good.”

  Katsuk went to the cave mouth, paused there to let his senses test the area. Shadows were shortening at the end of the notch as the sun climbed higher. Bright yellow skunk cabbages poked from the shadowed water at the lower end of the spring pool.

  It bothered him that he had struck Hoquat, although strong body-talk had been required then.

  Do I pity Hoquat? he wondered. Why pity anyone?

  But the boy had showed surprising strength. He had spirit in him. Hoquat was not a whiner. He was not a coward. His innocence lay within a real person whose center of being remained yet unformed but was gaining power. It would be easy to admire this Innocent.

  Must I admire the victim? Katsuk wondered.

  That would make this thing all the more difficult. Perhaps it would occur, though, as a special test of Katsuk’s purpose. One did not slay an innocent out of casual whim. One who wore the mantle of Soul Catcher dared not do a wrong thing. If it were done, it must fit the demands of the spirit world.

  Still, it would be a heavy burden to kill someone you admired. Too heavy a burden? Without the need for immediate decision, he could not say. This was not an issue he wanted to confront.

  Again, he wondered: Why was I chosen for this?

  Had it occurred in a way similar to the way he had chosen Hoquat? Out of what mysterious necessities did the spirit world act? Had the behavior of the white world become at last too much to bear? Certainly that must be the answer.

  He felt that he should call out from the cave mouth where he stood, shouting in a voice that could be heard all the way to the ocean:

  “You down there! See what you have done to us!”

  He stood lost in reverie and wondered presently if he might have shouted. But the hoard of life all around gave no sign of disturbance.

  If I admire Hoquat, he thought, I must do it only to strengthen my decision.

  ***

  From the speech Katsuk made to his people:

  Bear, wolf, raven, eagle—these were my ancestors. They were men in those days. That’s how it was. It really was. They celebrated when they felt happy about the life within them. They cried when they were sad. Sometimes, they sang. Before the hoquat killed us, our songs told it all. I have heard those songs and seen the carvings which tell the old stories. But carvings cannot talk or sing. They just sit there, their eyes staring and dead. Like the dead, they will be eaten by the earth.

  ***

  David shuddered with aversion to his surroundings. The gray-green gloom of the cave, the wet smoothness of rock walls at the sunlit mouth which his thong leash would not permit him to reach, the animal odors, the dance of dripping water outside—all tormented him.

  He was a battleground of emotions: something near hysteria compounded of hunger, dread, shuddering uncertainty, fatigue, rage.

  Katsuk came back into the cave, a black silhouette against sunlight. He wore the Russell knife at his waist, one hand on the handle.

  My knife, David thought. He began to tremble.

  “You are not sleeping,” Katsuk said.

  No answer.

  “You have questions?” Katsuk asked.

  “Why?” David whispered.

  Katsuk nodded but remained silent.

  The boy said: “You’re holding me for ransom, is that it?”

  Katsuk shook his head. “Ransom? Do you think I could ransom you for an entire world?”

  The boy shook his head, not understanding.

  “Perhaps I could ransom you for an end to all hoquat mistakes,” Katsuk said.

  “What’re you …”

  “Ahhh, you wonder if I’m crazy. Drunk, maybe. Crazy, drunken Indian. You see, I know all the cliches.”

  “I just asked why.” Voice low.

  “I’m an ignorant, incompetent savage, that’s why. If I have a string of degrees after my name, that must be an accident. Or I probably have white blood in me, eh? Hoquat blood? But I drink too much. I’m lazy. I don’t like to work and be industrious. Have I missed anything? Any other cliches? Oh, yes—I’m bloodthirsty, too.”

  “But I just—”

  “You wonder about ransom. I think you have made all the mistakes a hoquat should be permitted.”

  “Are you ... crazy?”

  Katsuk chuckled. “Maybe, just a little.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Barely whispered.

  “Go to sleep and don’t ask stupid questions.” He indicated the cave floor, clumps of dry moss which could be kicked into a bed.

  The boy took a quavering breath. “I don’t want to sleep.”

  “You will obey me.” Katsuk pointed to the floor, kicked some of the moss into position at the boy’s feet.

  Every movement a signal of defiance, Hoquat knelt, rolled onto his side, his tied hands pressed against the rock wall of the cave. His eyes remained open, glaring up at Katsuk.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “I can’t.” Katsuk noted the fatigue signs, the trembling, the glazed eyes. “Why can’t you?”

  “I just can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Stronger that time.

  Katsuk shook his head.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” the boy demanded.

  “Doing what?”

  “Kidnapping me, treating me like this.”

  “Treating you like what?”

  “You know!”

  “But you have received ordinary treatment for an Indian. Have our hands not been tied? Have we not been dragged where we would rather not go? Have we not been brutalised and forced to take names we did not want?”

  “But why me?”

  “Ahhhh, why you! The cry of innocence from every age.”

  Katsuk pressed his eyes tightly closed. His mind felt damned with evil sensations. He opened his eyes, knew he had become that other person, the one who used Charles Hobuhet’s education and experiences, but with a brain working in a different way. Ancient instincts pulsed in his flesh.

  “What’d I ever do to you?” the boy asked. “Precisely,” Katsuk said. “You have done nothing to me. That is why I chose you.”

  “You talk crazy!”

  “You think I have caught the hoquat disease, eh? You think I have only words, that I must find words to pin down what cannot be cut into word shapes. Your mouth bites at the universe. You give tongue to noises. I do not do that. I send another kind of message. I draw a design upon the emotions. My design will rise up inside people where they have no defenses. They will not be able to shut their ears and deny they heard me. I tell you, they will hear Katsuk!”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “It is odd,” Katsuk mused. “You may be one of the few people in the world who will not hear me.”

  “You’re crazy! You’re crazy!”

  “Perhaps that’s it. Yes. Now, go to sleep.”

  “You haven’t told me why you’re doing this.”

  “I want your world to understand something. That an innocent from your people can die just as other innocents have died.”

  The boy went pale, his mouth in a rigid grimace. He whispered: “You’re going to kill me.”

  “Perhaps not,” Katsuk lied. “You must remember that the gift of words is the gift of illusion.”

  “But you said ...”

  “I say this to you, Hoquat: Your world will feel my message in its balls! If you do as I tell you, all will go well with you.”

  “You’re lying!”

  Anger and shame tore at Katsuk. “Shut up!” he shouted.

  “You are! You’re lying—you’re lying.” The boy was sobbing now.

  “Shut up or I’ll kill you right now,” Katsuk growled.

  The sobs were choked off, but the wide-open eyes continued to stare up at him.

  Katsuk found his anger gone. Only sha
me remained. I did lie.

  He realised how undignified he had become. To allow his own emotion such wild expression! He felt shattered, seduced into the word ways of the hoquat, isolated by words, miserable and lonely.

  What men gave me this misery? he wondered.

  Barren sorrow permeated him. He sighed. Soul Catcher gave him no choice. The decision had been made. There could be no reprieve. But the boy had learned to detect lies.

  Speaking as reasonably as he could, Katsuk said: “You need sleep.”

  “How can I sleep when you’re going to kill me?”

  A reasonable question, Katsuk thought.

  He said: “I will not kill you while you sleep.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I swear it by my spirits, by the name I gave you, by my own name.”

  “Why should I believe that crazy stuff about spirits?” Katsuk pulled the knife partly from its sheath, said: “Close your eyes and you live.” The boy’s eyes blinked shut, snapped open.

  Katsuk found this vaguely amusing but wondered how he could convince Hoquat. Every word scattered what it touched.

  He asked: “If I go outside, will you sleep?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I will go outside then.”

  “My hands hurt.”

  Katsuk took a deep breath of resignation, bent to examine the bindings. They were tight but did not completely shut off circulation. He released the knots, chafed the boy’s wrists. Presently, he restored the bindings, added a slip noose to each arm above the elbows.

  He said: “If you struggle to escape now, these new knots will pull tight and shut off the circulation of blood to your arms. If that happens, I will not help you. I’ll just let your arms drop off.”

  “Will you go outside now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to eat?”

  “No.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “We will eat when you waken.”

  “What will we eat?”

  “There are many things to eat here: roots, grubs ...”

  “You’ll stay outside?”

  “Yes. Go to sleep. We face a long night. You will have to keep up with me then. If you cannot keep up, I will be forced to kill you.”

  “Why’re you doing this?”

  “I told you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Shut up and go to sleep.”

  “I’ll wake up if you come back.”

  Katsuk could not suppress a grin. “Good. I know what to do when I want to awaken you.”

  He stood up, went down to the spring pool, pushed his face into the water. It felt cold and fresh against his skin. He squatted back on his heels, allowed his senses to test the silences of this place. When he was sure of his surroundings, he made his way out to the edge of the trees where the shale slope began. He sat there for a time, quiet as a grouse crouching in its own shadow. He could see the trail his people had beaten down for centuries. It skirted the trees far down below the slide. The trail remained quite visible from this height, although forest and bracken had reclaimed it.

  He told himself: I must be strong now. My people have need of me. Our trails are eaten by the forest. Our children are cursed and slaughtered. Our old men do not speak to us anymore in words we can understand. We have withstood evil heaped upon evil but we are dying. We are landless in our own land.

  Quietly, to himself, Katsuk began singing the names of his dead: Janiktaht ... Kipskiltch ... As he sang, he thought how all of the past had been woven into the spirit of his people’s songs and now the songs, too, were dying.

  A black bear came out of the trees far below him, skirted the slide, and went up the fireweed slope eating kinnikinnick. It gave the shale a wide berth.

  We need not hurry here, Katsuk thought.

  Presently, he crept under the wide skirt of a fat spruce, deep into the shadows of the low boughs. He lay down facing the shale slope and prepared to sleep with the smell of the forest floor in his nostrils.

  Soon, he thought, I must replace the hoquat knife with a proper blade, one that is fit to touch the bow and arrow I will make.

  ***

  From a letter to his parents by David Marshall:

  Dear Mother and Dad: I am having a lot of fun. The airplane was early in Seattle. A man from camp met me there. We got on a small bus. The bus drove for a long time. It rained. It took us to a thing they call a cogwheel train. The train comes up the mountain to the camp. They chased a bear off the tracks. My counselor is a Indian, not like Mrs. Parma. He was born by the ocean he said. His name is Charles something. We call him Chief. We do not have tents to sleep in. Instead, we sleep in cabins. The cabins have names. I am in Cedar Cabin. When you write, put Cedar Cabin on the letter. One of the guys in my cabin was here last year. He says the Chief is the best counselor. Mr. Clark is the camp director. He took our picture with the Chief. I will send you one when he gets them. Eight of us sleep in our cabin. The Chief has his own room at the back near the toilet. Please send me six rolls of film and some insect repellent. I need a new flashlight. My other one got broken. A boy cut his hand on the train. There are lots of trees here. They have good sunsets. We will go on a two day hike Sunday. Thanks for the package of goodies. I found them on the train. After I passed my cookies around to all my friends half of them were gone. I haven’t opened the peanuts yet. We are waiting for diner right now. They are making us write before we eat.

  ***

  David awakened.

  For a moment his only awareness was of hunger cramps and the dry, hot thirst rasping his throat. Then he felt the thongs around his wrists and arms. He experienced surprise that he had slept. His eyes felt rough and heavy. Katsuk’s warning against fighting the thongs came back to him. The cave light was a green grayness. He had scattered the cushioning moss. Coldness from the rock beneath him chilled his flesh. A moment of shivering overcame him. When it passed, his gaze went up the thong to the loop secured around the rock spur. It was much too high.

  Where was that crazy Katsuk?

  David struggled to a sitting position. As he moved, he heard a helicopter pass across the rock slope directly opposite the cave’s mouth.

  He recognized the sound immediately and hope surged through him. Nothing else made quite that sound: Helicopter!

  David held his breath. He remembered the handkerchief he had dropped below the slide. He had carried the handkerchief for miles during the nightmare journey, wondering where to drop it. The handkerchief carried his monogrammed initials—a distinctive DMM.

  He had wormed the handkerchief from his pocket soon after thinking about it, wadded the cloth into a ball, and held it—waiting ... waiting. There had been no sense dropping it too soon. Katsuk had led them up and down streams, confusing their trail. David had thought of tearing the cloth into bits, dropping the pieces like a paper chase, but the monogram occupied only one corner and he had felt certain Katsuk would hear cloth ripping.

  At the rock slope, David had been moved as much by fatigue and desperation as any other motive. Katsuk was sure to hide them during daylight. The ground below the slope was open to the sky. No trail crossed that area. A handkerchief in an unusual place could attract attention. And Katsuk had been so intent on the slide, so confident, he had not been watching his back trail.

  Surely, the men in the helicopter out there now had seen the handkerchief.

  Again, the noisy racket of rotors swept across the mouth of the notch and its concealed cave. What were they doing? Would they land?

  David wished he could see the slope.

  Where was that crazy Katsuk? Had he been seen?

  David’s throat burned with thirst.

  Again, the helicopter passed the notch. David strained to hear any telltale variation in sound. Was rescue at hand?

  He thought of the long night’s march, the fears which had blocked his thoughts, the dark paths full of root stumbles. Hunger and terror cramped him now, doubled him over.
He stared down at the cave’s rock floor. The bear smell of the place came thickly into his nostrils.

  Again, the machine sound flooded the cave.

  David tried to recall the appearance of the slope. Was there a place for a helicopter to land? He had been so tired when they had emerged from the trees, so thirsty and hungry, so filled with desperation about where to leave the telltale handkerchief, he had not really seen the area. The blind feelings of the night with its stars cold and staring clogged his memory. He recalled only the confused surge of bird cries at dawn, falling upon senses amplified by hunger and thirst.

  What were they doing in that helicopter? Where was Katsuk?

  David tried to recall riding in a helicopter. He had traveled with his parents to and from airports in helicopters. That sound had to be a helicopter. But he had never paid much attention to what landing place a helicopter required, except to know it could land on a small space. Could it land on a slope? He didn’t know.

  Perhaps the rockslide kept the machine from landing. Katsuk had warned about that danger. Maybe Katsuk had a gun now. He could have hidden one here and recovered it. He could be out there waiting to shoot down the helicopter.

  David shook his head from side to side in desperation.

  He thought of shouting. No one in the helicopter would hear him above that engine noise. And Katsuk had warned that death would follow any outcry.

  David recalled his own knife in its sheath at Katsuk’s waist—the Russell knife from Canada. He imagined that knife being pulled from its sheath by Katsuk’s dark hand—one hard thrust ...

  He’ll kill me sure if I shout.

  The clatter of the machine circling in and out of the clearing around the rockslide confused David. The cave and its masking trees baffled the sound. He could not tell when the helicopter flew low into the slope or when it hovered above the cliff—only that it was out there, louder sometimes than at other times.

  Where was Katsuk?

  David’s teeth chattered with cold and terror. Hunger and thirst chopped time into uneven bits. The dusty yellow light outside the cave told him nothing. No matter how hard he listened, straining to identify what was happening, he could not interpret the sounds into meaning.

  There was only the single fact of the helicopter. The sound of it filled the cave once more. This time it came as an oddly distorted noise building slowly into a rumbling roar louder than thunder. The cave trembled around him.