Soul Catcher

by Frank Herbert

  David’s teeth chattered. He thought: Hoquat! I am David Marshall. I’m David Morgenstern Marshall. No matter how many times that madman calls me Hoquat, that won’t change a thing.

  There had been a sleeping bag in the hiker’s pack. Katsuk had made a ground cover of moss and cedar boughs, spread the bag over them. The bag had been pushed aside during the night and lay now in a damp wad. David pulled it around his shoulders, tried to still the chattering of his teeth. His head still ached where he had bruised it when Katsuk had hurled him to the ground.

  David thought then about the dead hiker. After he had regained consciousness and before they crossed the river.

  Katsuk had forced his captive back up the trail to that bloody body, saying: “Hoquat, go back to where I told you to hide and wait there.”

  David had been glad to obey. As much as he had wanted not to look at the dead youth, his eyes kept coming back to the gaping wound in the neck. He had climbed back to the mossy nurse log, hidden his face behind it, and lost himself to dry sobs.

  Then Katsuk, who had called him after a long time, was carrying the pack. There had been no sign of body or bloody marks of a struggle on the trail.

  They had stayed off the elk track for a time after that, climbing parallel to it, returning to the trail on the other side of a high ridge.

  At dusk, Katsuk had built a crude cedar-bark shelter deep in trees above a river. He had brought five small fish from the river, cooked them over a tiny fire in the shelter.

  David thought about the fish, tasting them in memory. Had Katsuk gone for food now?

  They had crossed the river before building the shelter. There had been a well-marked hiking trail, a bridge above a flood-scoured bar. The boards of the bridge had been soft wet with a pocking of slush on the downstream lip, the air all around full of smoky spray.

  Had Katsuk gone down there to get more fish?

  There was a sign by the bridge: FOOT OR HORSE USE ONLY.

  Game was thick along the river trail. They had seen two does, a spotted fawn, a brown rabbit running ahead of them for a space, then darting into the wet greenery.

  David thought: Maybe Katsuk put out a rabbit snare.

  Hunger knotted his stomach.

  They had climbed under a drizzle of rain. It had come down in thin plumes from catch-basin leaves to bend the ferns flat. There was no rain now though.

  Where was Katsuk?

  David peered out of the shelter. It was a dawn world of cold and dampness with the sound of ducks quacking somewhere. It was a ghostly world, a dark dawn. No bright cords of light, just a twisted, incoherent gray.

  He thought: I must not think how that hiker was killed.

  But there was no escaping that memory. Katsuk had done it in full view of his captive. A splash of light on steel and then that great gout of blood.

  David felt his chest shaking at the memory.

  Why had Katsuk done that? Because the hiker had called him Chief? Surely not. Why then? Could it be the spirits Katsuk kept referring to? Had they commanded him to murder?

  He was crazy. If he listened to spirits, they could order him to do anything.

  Anything.

  David wondered if he could escape in this foggy morning. But who knew where Katsuk was now? The hiker had tried to leave. Katsuk could be waiting even now for his captive to run.

  After the murder, all during that day, David’s mind had rattled with unspoken questions. Something had told him not to ask those questions of Katsuk. The death of the hiker must be put behind them. To recall it was to invite more death.

  They had come a long way from that terrible place of murder. David’s legs had ached with fatigue and he had wondered how Katsuk could keep up such a pace. Every time David had lagged behind, Katsuk had motioned with the hand which had wielded the knife.

  David remembered how he had welcomed nightfall. They had stopped perhaps a half hour before dark. It had been raining. Katsuk had ordered the boy to wait beneath a cedar while the shelter was built. The river valley had filled with liquid darkness that flowed into it from shadowed hills. The sodden woods had fallen silent. At dark, the rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. Sounds had grown in the darkness. David had heard rocks laboring in the river bottom, the noises of a world become chaos.

  Every time he had closed his eyes, his memory had filled with that blood-wet, gaping neck, the knife in its brutality flashing.

  For a long time, he had kept his eyes open, peered out of the shelter into the bower of darkness. A gray bulk of rock had emerged, hanging on the river’s far slope, released from the night by moonlight. David had stared at it. Somewhere in that fearful staring, he had gone to sleep.

  What was Katsuk doing?

  Dragging the sleeping bag around him, David crawled to the shelter’s opening. He poked his head out: cold, drifting fog everywhere. There was only one thing outside, a bulk of surrounding gray, wet and full of dull shapes, as though the fog tried to hold onto the night.

  Where had Katsuk gone?

  The man materialised then out of one of the dull shapes. He walked from the fog as though brushing aside a curtain, thrust a rolled bark cone into David’s hand, and said: “Drink this.”

  David obeyed, but his hand trembled so that he spilled part of the cone’s milky liquid onto his chin. The stuff smelled of herbs and tasted bitter. He gasped as it went down. It was cold in his mouth at first, then burned. He gulped convulsively, almost vomited.

  Shuddering, David held out the cup of bark, demanded: “What was that?”

  Katsuk pulled the sleeping bag from David’s shoulders, began rolling it. “That is Raven’s drink. I prepared it last night.” He stuffed the sleeping bag into the pack.

  “Was it whiskey?” David asked.

  “Hah! Where would I get the hoquat drink?”

  “But what …”

  “It is made from roots. One of the roots is devil’s club. It gives you strength.” Katsuk slipped the pack straps over his shoulder, stood up. “We go now.”

  David crawled out of the shelter, got to his feet. As he cleared the entrance, Katsuk kicked a supporting limb for the shelter. The bark structure fell with a clatter, sending up a puff of ashes from their fire pit. Katsuk took up a limb, went to an animal burrow above the shelter, scattered dirt over the area. When he was through, he had created the effect that the animal had moved the dirt.

  A ball of heat radiated from the drink in David’s stomach. He felt wide awake and full of energy. His teeth had stopped chattering.

  Katsuk threw aside the digging stick, said: “Stay close behind me.” He climbed around the animal burrow into the fog.

  David, stopping to pick up a pebble—his third, to mark the third day—thought of putting his footprints in the raw dirt. But Katsuk had stopped above him and was watching.

  Skirting the burrow, David climbed toward his captor.. Katsuk turned, resumed the climb.

  Why do I just follow him? David wondered. I could run away and hide in this fog. But if he found me, he’d kill me. He still has that knife.

  A vision of the slain hiker filled his mind.

  He’d kill me sure. He’s crazy.

  Katsuk began reciting something in a language strange to David. It was a low chant that went over the same syllables again and again.

  “Crazy Indian,” David muttered. But he spoke in a low voice which would not carry to Katsuk.

  ***

  Chief Park Ranger William Redek:

  Well, you have to realise how big and wild this country really is, especially in the Wilderness Area. For example, we know there are at least six small aircraft crashed somewhere in there. We’ve never found them, although we’ve searched. Have we ever searched! Not even a clue. And those aircraft aren’t actively trying to hide from us.

  ***

  “Why do you pick up those rocks?” Katsuk asked.

  David held up four pebbles in his left hand. “To count the days. We’ve been gone four days.”

 
; “We count by nights,” Katsuk said.

  And Katsuk wondered at himself, trying to teach this essential thing to a hoquat. Four pebbles for the days or four pebbles for nights, what difference could it make for a hoquat? Night and day were only separations between degrees of fear for this young man’s people.

  They sat in another bark shelter Katsuk had built, finishing off the last morsels of a grouse Katsuk had snared. The only light was from the fire in the center of the shelter. It cast ruddy shadows on the crude structure over them, glistened on the knots tied in rope made from twisted willow which supported the framework.

  It was full dark outside and there was a pond which had reflected molten copper in the sunset. Now it was a haunted pond full of captured stars.

  Katsuk had taken the grouse from a giant hemlock near the pond. He had called it a roosting tree. The ground beneath it was white with grouse droppings. The grouse had come sleepily to the hemlock branches at dusk and Katsuk had snared one with a long pole and a string noose.

  David belched, sighed, put the last of the grouse bones into the fire pit as Katsuk had instructed him. Pit and bones would be covered up and disguised in the morning.

  Katsuk had spread cedar boughs under the sleeping bag. He stretched out under the bag with his feet toward the dying fire, said: “Come. We sleep now.”

  David crawled around the fire, slid under the bag. It felt clammy from not being hung to dry in the sun. There was an acid smell to it which mingled with the smoke and burned grease, perspiration, and cedar.

  The fire burned itself down to a few coals. David felt the night close in around him. Sounds took on fearful shapes. He felt the cedar needles scratching. This was a place so utterly foreign to the sounds, sights, and smells of his usual life that he tried to recall things from other times which would fit here. All he could bring to mind were the tirehumming whine of a car crossing a steel bridge, the city’s smoke, his mother’s perfume ... nothing fitted. One place rejected the other.

  Softly, he slipped across the border of awareness and into sleep, there to dream. A giant face leaned over him. It was a face much like Katsuk’s—broad, prominent cheekbones, a mane of thick black hair, wide mouth.

  The mouth opened, said: “You are not yet ready. When you are ready, I will come for you. Pray then, and a wish will be granted you.” The mouth closed, but the voice continued: “I will come for you ... come for you ... for you ... you!” It reverberated in his skull and filled him with terror. He awoke trembling, sweating, and with a feeling that the voice continued somewhere.

  “Katsuk?”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “But I had a dream.”

  “What kind of dream?” There was alertness in the man’s voice.

  “I don’t know. It scared me.”

  “What did you dream?”

  David described it.

  His voice oddly withdrawn, Katsuk said: “You had a spirit dream.”

  “Was it your god?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What does it mean, Katsuk?”

  “You are the only one who can tell.”

  Katsuk struggled with an empty feeling in his breast. A spirit dream for Hoquat! Was it Soul Catcher playing an evil game? There were stories about such things. What a disturbing dream! Hoquat had been granted the right to a wish—any wish. If he wished to leave the wilderness, Hoquat could do it.

  “Katsuk, what’s a spirit dream?”

  “That’s where you get a spirit guide for your other soul—in the dream.”

  “You said it could be a god.”

  “It can be a god or a spirit. He tells you what you must do, where you must go.”

  “My dream didn’t tell me to go anywhere.”

  “Your dream told you that you aren’t yet ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To go anywhere.”

  “Oh.” Silence, then: “That dream scared me.”

  “Ahhh, you see—the hoquat science doesn’t liberate you from the terror of the gods.”

  “Do you really believe that stuff, Katsuk?”

  His voice low and tense, Katsuk said: “Listen to me! Every person has two souls. One remains in the body. The other travels high or low. It is guided by the kind of life you lead. The soul that travels must have a guide: a spirit or a god.”

  “That isn’t what they teach in church.”

  Katsuk snorted. “You doubt, eh? Once, I doubted. It almost destroyed me. I no longer doubt.”

  “Did you get a guide?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Raven your guide?”

  Katsuk felt Soul Catcher stirring within him, said: “You do not understand about guides, Hoquat.”

  David scowled into the darkness. “Can only Indians get—”

  “Don’t call me Indian!”

  “But you’re—”

  “Indian is a fool’s name. You gave it to us. You refused to admit you hadn’t found India. Why must I live with your mistake?”

  David recalled Mrs. Parma, said: “I know a real Indian from India. She works for us. My parents brought her from India.”

  “Everywhere you hoquat go, the natives work for you.”

  “She’d be starving if she still lived in India. I’ve heard my mother talk about it. People starve there.”

  “People starve everywhere.”

  “Do real Indians get guides?”

  “Anyone can get a guide.”

  “Do you do it just by dreaming?”

  “You go into the forest and you pray.”

  “We’re in the forest. Could I pray now?”

  “Sure. Ask Alkuntam to send you a guide.”

  “Is Alkuntam your name for God?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Did Alkuntam give you your guide?”

  “You don’t understand it, Hoquat. Go to sleep.”

  “But how does your spirit guide you?”

  “I explained that. It speaks to you.” David recalled the dream. “Right in your head?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did your spirit tell you to kidnap me?”

  Katsuk felt the boy’s questions as a pressure, stirring up wild powers within him. Soul Catcher moved there, stretching.

  David pressed the question: “Did your spirit tell you?”

  Katsuk said: “Be silent or I will tie and gag you.” He turned away, stretched his feet toward the warmth remaining in the rocks around the fire pit.

  “I am Tamanawis speaking to you ...”

  Katsuk heard the spirit so loud he wondered that the boy could not hear it.

  “You have been given the perfect innocent.”

  David said: “When does your spirit speak to you?”

  “When there is something you need to know,” Katsuk whispered.

  “What do I need to know?”

  “How to accept my sharp and biting point,” Katsuk whispered.

  “What?”

  “You need to know how to live that you may die correctly. First, you need to live. Most of you hoquat do not live.”

  “Does your spirit make you talk crazy like that?”

  Katsuk felt hysterical laughter in his throat, said: “Go to sleep or I will kill you before you have lived.”

  David heard intensity in the words, began to tremble. The man was crazy. He could do anything. He had murdered.

  Katsuk felt the trembling, reached back, and patted the boy’s shoulder. “Do not worry, Hoquat. You will yet live. I promise it.”

  Still the boy’s trembling continued.

  Katsuk sat up, took the old flute from his belt pouch, blew softly into it. He felt the song go out, smoke-yearning sounds in the shelter.

  For a few moments, Katsuk imagined himself in some old, safe place with a friend, with a brother. They would share music. They would plan the hunt for the morrow. They would preserve the dignity of this place and of each other.

  David listened to the low music, lulled by it. Presently, Katsuk stopped, restor
ed the flute to its pouch. Hoquat breathed with the even rhythm of sleep. As though it were a thing of reality which could be seen and touched, Katsuk felt a bond being created between himself and this boy. Was it possible they were really brothers in that other world which moved invisibly and soundlessly beside the world of the senses?

  My brother, Hoquat, Katsuk thought.

  ***

  From a paper by Charles Hobuhet for Philosophy 200:

  Your language is filled with a rigid time sense which denies the plastic fluidity of the universe. The whole universe represents a single organism to my people. It is the raw material of our creation. Your language denies this with every word you utter. You break the universe into lonely pieces. My people recognise immediately that White-head’s “bifurcation of nature” is illusion. It is a product of your language. The people who program your computers know this. They say: “Garbage In—Garbage Out.” When they get garbage out, they look to the program, to the language. My language requires that I participate with my surroundings in everything I do. Your language isolates you from the universe. You have forgotten the origin of the letters in which your language is written. Those letters evolved from ideographs which stood for movements in the surrounding universe.

  ***

  In the low light of morning, David stood beneath a tall cedar, fingered the five pebbles in his pocket. There was dew on the grass outside the cedar’s spread, as though each star from the night had left its mark upon the earth. Katsuk stood in the grass adjusting the straps of the pack. Morning’s red glow remained on the peaks beyond him.

  David asked: “Where are we going today?”

  “You talk too much, Hoquat.”

  “You’re always telling me to shut up.”

  “Because you talk too much.”

  “How ‘m I going to learn if I don’t talk?”

  “By opening your senses and by understanding what your senses tell you.”

  Katsuk pulled a fern frond from the ground, set off through the trees. He swung the fern against his thigh as he walked, listened to the world around him—the sounds of the boy following, the animals ... Quail ran through an opening off to his left. He saw the yellow-brown patch of an elk’s rump far off through the moss-green light of the morning.

  They were climbing steadily now, their breath puffing out in white clouds. Presently, they came to a saddleback filled with old-growth hemlock and went down into a gloomy valley where lichen grew like scabs on the trees.