Soul Catcher

by Frank Herbert

  David’s eye was caught by the venturesome racing of a squirrel’s feet along a high limb. He wondered only if the creature could be caught and eaten.

  The day wore on. Sometimes Katsuk talked about himself and his people, fanciful stories indistinguishable from reality. They moved through damp woods, through sunlit clearings, beneath clouds, beneath dripping leaves. Always, there was the sound of their own footsteps.

  David forgot about his hunger in the presence of great weariness. Where were they going? Why were there no more aircraft?

  Katsuk did not think of a destination, saying, “Now we are here, and we will go there.” He felt himself changing, sensed the ancient instincts taking over. He sensed blank places growing in his memory, things he no longer knew in the ways this hoquat world accepted.

  Where would the changes in him lead?

  The answer unfolded in his mind, the spirits revealing their wisdom: The workings of his brain would go through a deep metamorphosis until, at last, his mind lay like a drunk within his driven self. He would be Soul Catcher entirely.

  There was a spring shadowed by a giant cottonwood. Deer tracks led up to it and all around. Katsuk stopped and they drank. The boy splashed his face and collar.

  Katsuk watched him, thinking: How powerful, this young human, how strange, drinking from that spring with his hands. What would his people think of such a lad in such a pose?

  There was a new grace in things the boy did. He was fitting himself into this life. When it was time for silence, he was silent. When it was time to drink, he drank. Hunger came upon him in its proper order. The spirit of the wilderness had seeped into him, beginning to say that it was right for such a one to be here. The rightness of it had not yet become complete, though. This was still a hoquat lad. The cells of his flesh whispered rebellion and rejection of the earth around him. At any moment he might strike out and become once more the total alien to this place. The thing lay in delicate balance.

  Katsuk imagined himself then as a person who adjusted that balance. The boy must not demand food before its time. Thirst must be quenched only in the rhythm of thirst. The shattering intrusion of a voice must be prevented by willing it not to happen.

  Bees weighted with pollen were working in fireweed on the slope below the spring. Katsuk thought: They watch us. They are the spirit eyes from which we never escape.

  He stared through leaf-tattered light at the working creatures. They were fitted into the orderliness of this place. They were not many creatures, but one single organism. They were Bee, the spirit messenger who had brought him here.

  The boy finished drinking at the spring, sat back on his heels, watchful, waiting.

  For a glimmering instant, something in the set of the boy’s head opened for Katsuk a glimpse of the man who had fathered this human. The adult peered out of youthful eyes, weighing, judging, planning.

  Momentarily, it unnerved Katsuk to think of that man-and-father here. The father was no innocent. He would have all of the hoquat vices. He would have the powers, evil and good, which had given the hoquat dominion over the primitive world. That one must be kept in the background, suppressed.

  How could it be done? The boy’s flesh could not be separated from that which gave it life. A spirit power must be invoked here. Which spirit power? How? Could the man-father be driven away with his own guilt?

  Katsuk thought: My father should come to help me now.

  He tried to call up a vision of his father, but no face came, not even a voice. Katsuk felt the seeds of panic.

  There had been a father. The man had existed. He was back there walking the beaches, fishing, breeding two children. But he had taken the path of drink and inward rage and a death in the water. Were the hoquat to blame for that?

  Where was his face, his voice? He was Hobuhet, the Riverman, whose people had lived on this land for twice a thousand years. He had fathered a son.

  And Katsuk thought: But I am no longer Charles Hobuhet. I am Katsuk. Bee is my father. I have been called to do a terrible thing. The spirit I must call upon is Soul Catcher.

  Silently, he prayed then, and saw at once how the boy’s eyelids blinked, how his attention wandered. No power stood against Soul Catcher in this wilderness. Once more, Katsuk felt calm. The greatest of the spirits could not be doubted. The hoquat father had been driven back into the flesh. Only the Innocent remained.

  Katsuk arose and strode off along the slope, hearing the boy follow. There had been no need for words of command. Soul Catcher had created a wake in the air which drew the boy into it as though he were caught on a tow line.

  Now, Katsuk left the game trail he had been following and struck off through moss-draped hemlocks. There was a granite ledge up above them somewhere hemming in the river valley. Without ordering his feet to seek that place, Katsuk knew he would find it.

  He came on the first outcroppings within the hour and moved out of the trees, climbing a slope of stunted huckleberry bushes toward rock shade. The boy followed, panting, pulling himself up by the bushes as he saw Katsuk doing. They emerged presently on a bald rock and there was the river valley spread out southward with sweet grass and elk grazing in a meadow.

  A string of fat quail stuttered through sun-splashed shadows below him, catching Katsuk’s attention. The quail reminded him of a hunger which he knew his body would feel if it were time for that sensation. But he sensed no hunger, knowing by this that his flesh accommodated itself to primitive ways.

  The boy had sprawled out on sun-warmed rock. Katsuk wondered if Hoquat felt hunger or denied it. The lad also was accommodating to primitive ways. But how was he doing it? Was he immersed so deeply in each moment that only the needs of the moment called out to his senses? The climb had tired him and thus he rested. That was the correct way. But what else had changed in the hoquat flesh?

  Carefully, Katsuk studied his captive. Perspiration had left damp darkness in the hair at the boy’s neck. Stains of brown dirt marked the legs of his trousers. Streaks of mud were drying on his canvas shoes.

  Katsuk smelled the boy’s sweat, a youthful, musky sweetness in it which called up memories of school locker rooms. He thought:

  It is a fact that the earth which marks us on the surface also leaves its traces within us.

  There would come a moment when the boy was tied so firmly to this wilderness that he could not escape it. If the link were forged in the right way, innocence maintained, there would be a power in it to challenge any spirit.

  I was marked by his world; now he is marked by mine.

  This had become a contest on two levels—the straight-forward capture of a victim and the victim’s desire to escape, but beneath that a wrestling of spirits. The signs of that other contest were all around.

  Katsuk looked out across the valley. There was an old forest on the far slope, fire dead, burned silver hacking the green background into brittle shapes.

  The boy turned onto his back, threw a hand across his eyes. Katsuk said: “We will go now.”

  “Can’t we wait just a minute?” Without removing the hand from his eyes. Katsuk chuckled. “You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing?” The boy took the hand away, looked up at Katsuk. “What do you ...”

  “You slow down when we’re crossing a meadow. You trip when we ford the river, then you want me to build a fire. You think I don’t know why you complained when we left the elk trail?”

  Blood suffused the boy’s cheeks.

  Katsuk said: “Look where we are now, eh?” He pointed skyward. “Wide open to searching devil machines, huh? Or men could see us from the valley. They could identify us with binoculars.”

  The boy glared at him. “Why do you say devil machines instead of helicopters? You know what they are.”

  “True, I know what you think they are. But different people see things differently.”

  David turned away. He felt stubborn determination to prolong this moment in the open. Hunger and fatigue helped him now. They sapped his physical str
ength but fed his rage.

  Abruptly, Katsuk laughed, sat down beside him.

  “Very well, Hoquat. I will demonstrate Raven’s power. We will rest here while it’s warm. Stare at the sky all you wish. Raven will hide us even if a devil machine flies directly over us.”

  David thought: He really believes that!

  Katsuk rolled onto his side, studied his captive. How strange that Hoquat didn’t understand about Tamanawis. The boy would wait and wait, hoping, praying. But Raven had spoken.

  The rock felt warm and soothing beneath him. Katsuk rolled onto his back, glanced around. A quaking aspen grew from the sunward side of their aerie. The quickness of the bright sun pulsing on the aspen’s leaves made him think of Hoquat’s life.

  Yes, Hoquat is like that: trembling in every wind, now glittering bright, now shadowy, now innocent, now evil. He is the perfect Hoquat for me.

  The boy said: “You don’t really believe that raven stuff.”

  Katsuk spoke softly: “You will see.”

  “A guy at camp said you went to the university. They must teach you at the university how stupid that stuff is.”

  “Yes, I went to the hoquat university. They teach ignorance there. I could not learn ignorance, although everyone was studying it. Maybe I’m too stupid.”

  Katsuk grinned at the sky, his gaze aimlessly following an osprey which soared and circled high above them.

  David watched his captor covertly, thinking how the man was like a big cat he’d seen at the San Francisco zoo—supine on the rock, reclining at ease, the tawny skin dulled by an overlay of dust, eyes blinking, flaring, blinking.

  “Katsuk?”

  “Yes, Hoquat.”

  “They’re going to catch you and kill you.”

  “Only if Raven permits it.”

  “You were probably so stupid they wouldn’t let you stay at the university!”

  “Haven’t I admitted it?”

  “What do you know about anything?”

  Katsuk heard the rage and fear in the boy’s voice, wondered what kind of a son this one had been. It was easy to think of that stage in the boy’s life as past—all done. This one would never live to a ripe and wrinkled fulfillment. He had accepted too many lies, this one. Even without a Katsuk he would never have made it to a rich old time of quiet.

  “You don’t know anything!” the boy pressed.

  Katsuk shrugged himself into a new position, selected a stem of grass growing from a crack in the rock. He slipped the grass free of its sheath, began to chew the sweet juices.

  David tasted the sourness at the back of his throat, muttered: “You’re just stupid!”

  Slowly, Katsuk turned his head, studied the boy. “In this place, Hoquat, I am the professor and you are the stupid.”

  The boy rolled away, stared into the sky.

  “Look up there all you wish,” Katsuk said. “Raven hides us from searchers.” He extracted another grass-blade from its green sheath, chewed it.

  “Professor!” the boy sneered. Katsuk said: “And you are slow to learn. You are hungry, yet there is food all around us.” The young eyes jerked toward the grass in Katsuk’s mouth.

  “Yes, this grass. It has much sugar in it. Back when we crossed the river, you saw me take the roots of those reeds, wash them, and chew them. You saw me eat those fat grubs, but you only wondered out loud how we could catch fish.”

  David felt the words burn into his consciousness. Grass grew from the rock near his head. He yanked a stem. It came up by its roots.

  Katsuk chuckled, selected a supple young shoot, showed how to draw out the tender stem—slowly, firmly—without disturbing the roots.

  David chewed the grass, experimentally at first. Finding it sweet, he ground the stem in his teeth. Hunger knotted his stomach. He pulled another stem, another ...

  Katsuk interrupted. “You’ve learned one lesson. Come. We will go now.”

  “You’re afraid your raven can’t hide us.”

  “You want a conclusive scientific test, eh? Very well, just stay where you are.”

  Katsuk turned away, cocked his head to one side, listening.

  The pose primed David’s senses. He felt the sound of an engine in the air, realised Katsuk must have been hearing it for some time. So that was why he’d wanted to go!

  Katsuk said: “You hear it?”

  David held his breath. The sound grew louder. He felt his heart beating wildly.

  Katsuk lay back without moving.

  David thought: If I jump up and wave, he’ll kill me.

  Katsuk closed his eyes. He felt sheet lightning in his brain, an inner sky filled with fire. This was an ultimate test. He prayed for the inner sense of power. This is Katsuk ... The sound of the helicopter weighed upon his senses.

  David stared southwest across the aspen which shaded their rock. The sound was coming from there. It grew louder ... louder.

  Katsuk lay motionless, with his eyes closed.

  David wanted to shout: “Run!” It was insane. But Katsuk would be caught if he stayed there. Why didn’t he get up and run into the trees?

  A fit of trembling overcame David. Movement flickered in the sky above the aspen. David stared, frozen.

  The helicopter was high but in plain sight. His gaze followed its passage: a big helicopter flying through a patch of blue sky between clouds. It flew from right to left in the open sky perhaps a mile away. An occupant would only have to glance this way to see two figures on the high rock escarpment.

  The big machine crossed the far ridge of the river valley.

  High trees there gradually concealed it. The sound diminished.

  As it disappeared, a single raven flew over the rock where David lay, then another, another ...

  The birds flew silently, intent upon some private destination.

  Katsuk opened his eyes in time to see the last of them. The sound of the helicopter was gone. He looked at the boy. “You did not try to attract their attention. Why? I would not have stopped you.”

  David’s glance flicked across the knife at Katsuk’s waist. “Yes, you would.”

  “I would not.”

  David sensed an impulse in the words, a confidence that spoke of truth. He reacted with bitter frustration. It made him want to run and cry.

  Katsuk said: “Raven hides us.”

  David thought of the birds which had flown overhead. They had arrived after the helicopter was gone. It made no real sense to him, but David felt the flight of birds had been a signal. He had the eerie sensation that the birds had spoken to Katsuk in some private way.

  Katsuk said: “I don’t have to kill you while Raven protects us. Without Raven’s protection ... well ...”

  David whirled away. Tears stung his eyes. I should’ve jumped up and waved! I should’ve tried!

  In one supple motion, Katsuk arose, said: “We go now.”

  Without a backward glance to see if the boy followed, Katsuk crossed the open rock, plunged into the trees on the next slope. He sensed rain in that southwest wind. Tonight it would rain.

  ***

  From an editorial submitted to the University of Washington Daily by Charles Hobuhet:

  In terms of the flesh, you whites act upon fragmented beliefs. You fall therefrom into loneliness and violence. You do not support your fellows, yet complain of being unsupported. You scream for freedom while rationalizing your own self-imposed limitations. You exist in constant tension between tyranny and victimization. Through all your fraudulent pretensions and roundabout self-trickery, you say you would risk anything to achieve equal happiness for all. But your words risk nothing.

  ***

  David fingered the two small pebbles in his pocket—one for each day. The second day with this madman. They had slept and dozed through the night beneath a ledge which sheltered them from the rain. Katsuk had refused to build a fire, but he had gone alone into the forest and returned with food: a gray mush in a bark bowl. David had wolfed it, savoring an acrid sweetness. Katsuk had
explained then that it was lily roots chopped with grubs and sweet red ants.

  At the look of revulsion on David’s face, Katsuk had laughed, said: “Squeamishness can kill you out here as fast as anything else. That is good food. It has everything in it that you need.”

  The laughter had silenced David’s objections more than any other argument. He had eaten the gray mush again as dawn glared over the trees.

  He had been following Katsuk two hours this morning before his clothes dried.

  There were hemlocks overhead now. Ancient blaze marks formed pitch-ringed scars on some of the tree trunks. Katsuk had recognized the marks and explained them: This was a way his ancestors had traveled. Ferns and moss lay in a tangled miniature wilderness under the trees, obscuring the ancient track, but Katsuk said this was the way.

  The sky darkened. David wondered if it was going to rain again.

  Up ahead, Katsuk paused, studied his surroundings. He turned, watched the boy plunging along behind—over mossy logs, around great clumps of fern.

  Katsuk stared down the slope ahead of him. The ancient elk trail his people had used ran somewhere down there. He would cross it soon and follow the path of his wild brethren.

  The boy came up to him, stood panting.

  Katsuk said: “Stay closer to me.”

  He set out once more, skirted a mossy log, noted beneath it a tiny dewed spiderweb. All around him lay a forest of mossy limbs—every limb draped with moss like green wool hung out to dry. The light, now bright and now dull as clouds concealed the sun, alternately flattened the colors and then filled the world with green jeweled glowing. At one passage of muted green, the sun suddenly emerged and sent a rope of light plunging through the trees to the forest floor.

  Katsuk walked through the light, then ducked under dark boughs. He heard limbs catching at the boy behind him, scratching, slithering.

  Beyond the dark passage, Katsuk stopped, reached out a hand, and caught the boy from stepping past. The trail was directly in front of them about two feet down a steep bank. It sloped down to the left. Tracks of hiking boots marked the soft earth.