The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

by John W. Campbell Jr.

  “Wouldn’t try that!” she murmured.

  Mad again, the captain reached out quickly and got a handful of leathery cloth. There was a blur of motion, and what felt like a small explosion against his left kneecap. He grunted with anguished surprise and fell back on a bale of Councilor Rapport’s all-weather cloaks. But he had retained his grip—Goth fell half on top of him, and that was still a favorable position. Then her head snaked around, her neck seemed to extend itself; and her teeth snapped his wrist.

  Weasels don’t let go—

  “Didn’t think he’d have the nerve!” Goth’s voice came over the communicator. There was a note of grudging admiration in it. It seemed that she was inspecting her bruises.

  All tangled up in the job of bandaging his freely bleeding wrist, the captain hoped she’d find a good plenty to count. His knee felt the size of a sofa pillow and throbbed like a piston engine.

  “The captain is a brave man,” Maleen was saying reproachfully. “You should have known better—”

  “He’s not very smart, though!” the Leewit remarked suggestively.

  There was a short silence.

  “Is he? Goth? Eh?” the Leewit urged.

  “Perhaps not very,” said Goth.

  “You two lay off him!” Maleen ordered. “Unless,” she added meaningly, “you want to swim back to Karres—on the Egger Route!”

  “Not me,” the Leewit said briefly.

  “You could still do it, I guess,” said Goth. She seemed to be reflecting. “All right—we’ll lay off him. It was a fair fight, anyway.”

  IV.

  They raised Karres the sixteenth day after leaving Porlumma. There had been no more incidents; but then, neither had there been any more stops or other contacts with the defenseless Empire. Maleen had cooked up a poultice which did wonders for his knee. With the end of the trip in sight, all tensions had relaxed; and Maleen, at least, seemed to grow hourly more regretful at the prospect of parting.

  After a brief study, Karres could be distinguished easily enough by the fact that it moved counterclockwise to all the other planets of the Iverdahl System.

  Well, it would, the captain thought.

  They came soaring into its atmosphere on the dayside without arousing any visible interest. No communicator signals reached them; and no other ships showed up to look them over. Karres, in fact, had all the appearance of a completely uninhabited world. There were a larger number of seas, too big to be called Lakes and too small to be oceans, scattered over its surface. There was one enormously towering ridge of mountains that ran from pole to pole, and any number of lesser chains. There were two good-sized ice caps; and the southern section of the planet was speckled with intermittent stretches of snow. Almost all of it seemed to be dense forest.

  It was a handsome place, in a wild, somber way.

  They went gliding over it, from noon through morning and into the dawn fringe—the captain at the controls, Goth and the Leewit flanking him at the screens, and Maleen behind him to do the directing. After a few initial squeals, the Leewit became oddly silent. Suddenly the captain realized she was blubbering.

  Somehow, it startled him to discover that her homecoming had affected the Leewit to that extent. He felt Goth reach out behind him and put her hand on the Leewit’s shoulder. The smallest witch sniffled happily.

  “‘S beautiful!” she growled.

  He felt a resurge of the wondering, protective friendliness they had aroused in him at first. They must have been having a rough time of it, at that. He sighed; it seemed a pity they hadn’t got along a little better!

  “Where’s everyone hiding?” he inquired, to break up the mood. So far, there hadn’t been a sign of human habitation.

  “There aren’t many people on Karres,” Maleen said from behind his shoulder. “But we’re going to The Town—you’ll meet about half of them there!”

  “What’s that place down there?” the captain asked with sudden interest. Something like an enormous lime-white bowl seemed to have been set flush into the floor of the wide valley up which they were moving.

  “That’s the Theater where… ouch!” the Leewit said. She fell silent then but turned to give Maleen a resentful look.

  “Something strangers shouldn’t be told about, eh?” the captain said tolerantly. Goth glanced at him from the side.

  “We’ve got rules,” she said.

  He let the ship down a little as they passed over “the Theater where—” It was a sort of large, circular arena, with numerous steep tiers of seats running up around it. But all was bare and deserted now.

  On Maleen’s direction, they took the next valley fork to the right and dropped lower still. He had his first look at Karres animal life then. A flock of large, creamy-white birds, remarkably Terrestrial in appearance, flapped by just below them, apparently unconcerned about the ship. The forest underneath had opened out into a long stretch of lush meadow land, with small creeks winding down into its center. Here a herd of several hundred head of beasts was grazing—beasts of mastodonic size and build, with hairless, shiny black hides. The mouths of their long, heavy heads were twisted up into sardonic, crocodilian grins as they blinked up at the passing Venture.

  “Black Bollems,” said Goth, apparently enjoying the captain’s expression. “Lots of them around; they’re tame. But the gray mountain ones are good hunting.”

  “Good eating, too!” the Leewit said. She licked her lips daintily. “Breakfast—!” she sighed, her thoughts diverted to a familiar track. “And we ought to be just in time!”

  “There’s the field!” Maleen cried, pointing. “Set her down there, captain!”

  The “field” was simply a flat meadow of close-trimmed grass running smack against the mountainside to their left. One small vehicle, bright blue in color, was parked on it; and it was bordered on two sides by very tall, blue-black trees.

  That was all.

  The captain shook his head. Then he set her down.

  The town of Karres was a surprise to him in a good many ways. For one thing, there was much more of it than you would have thought possible after flying over the area. It stretched for miles through the forest, up the flanks of the mountain and across the valley—little clusters of houses or individual ones, each group screened from all the rest and from the sky overhead by the trees.

  They liked color on Karres; but then they hid it away! The houses were bright as flowers, red and white, apple-green, golden-brown—all spick and span, scrubbed and polished and aired with that brisk, green forest-smell. At various times of the day, there was also the smell of remarkably good things to eat. There were brooks and pools and a great number of shaded vegetable gardens to the town. There were risky-looking treetop playgrounds, and treetop platforms and galleries which seemed to have no particular purpose. On the ground was mainly an enormously confusing maze of paths—narrow trails of sandy soil snaking about among great brown tree roots and chunks of gray mountain rock, and half covered with fallen needle leaves. The first six times the captain set out unaccompanied, he’d lost his way hopelessly within minutes, and had to be guided back out of the forest.

  But the most hidden of all were the people! About four thousand of them were supposed to live in the town, with as many more scattered about the planet. But you never got to see more than three or four at any one time—except when now and then a pack of children, who seemed to the captain to be uniformly of the Leewit’s size, would burst suddenly out of the undergrowth across a path before you, and vanish again.

  As for the others, you did hear someone singing occasionally; or there might be a whole muted concert going on all about, on a large variety of wooden musical instruments which they seemed to enjoy tootling with, gently.

  But it wasn’t a real town at all, the captain thought. They didn’t live like people, these Witches of Karres—it was more like a flock of strange forest birds that happened to be nesting in the same general area. Another thing: they appeared to be busy enough—but what was th
eir business?

  He discovered he was reluctant to ask Toll too many questions about it. Toll was the mother of his three witches; but only Goth really resembled her. It was difficult to picture Goth becoming smoothly matured and pleasantly rounded; but that was Toll. She had the same murmuring voice, the same air of sideways observation and secret reflection. And she answered all the captain’s questions with apparent frankness; but he never seemed to get much real information out of what she said.

  It was odd, too! Because he was spending several hours a day in her company, or in one of the next rooms at any rate, while she went about her housework. Toll’s daughters had taken him home when they landed; and he was installed in the room that belonged to their father—busy just now, the captain gathered, with some sort of research of a geological nature elsewhere on Karres. The arrangement worried him a little at first, particularly since Toll and he were mostly alone in the house. Maleen was going to some kind of school; she left early in the morning and came back late in the afternoon; and Goth and the Leewit were just plain running wild! They usually got in long after the captain had gone to bed and were off again before he turned out for breakfast.

  It hardly seemed like the right way to raise them! One afternoon, he found the Leewit curled up and asleep in the chair he usually occupied on the porch before the house. She slept there for four solid hours, while the captain sat nearby and leafed gradually through a thick book with illuminated pictures called “Histories of Ancient Yarthe.” Now and then, he sipped at a cool, green, faintly intoxicating drink Toll had placed quietly beside him some while before, or sucked an aromatic smoke from the enormous pipe with a floor rest, which he understood was a favorite of Toll’s husband.

  Then the Leewit woke up suddenly, uncoiled, gave him a look between a scowl and a friendly grin, slipped off the porch and vanished among the trees.

  He couldn’t quite figure that look! It might have meant nothing at all in particular, but—

  The captain laid down his book then and worried a little more. It was true, of course, that nobody seemed in the least concerned about his presence. All of Karres appeared to know about him, and he’d met quite a number of people by now in a casual way. But nobody came around to interview him or so much as dropped in for a visit. However, Toll’s husband presumably would be returning presently, and—

  How long had he been here, anyway?

  Great Patham, the captain thought, shocked. He’d lost count of the days!

  Or was it weeks?

  He went in to find Toll.

  “It’s been a wonderful visit,” he said, “but I’ll have to be leaving, I guess. Tomorrow morning, early—”

  Toll put some fancy sewing she was working on back in a glass basket, laid her thin, strong witch’s hands in her lap, and smiled up at him.

  “We thought you’d be thinking that,” she said, “and so we—You know, captain, it was quite difficult to find a way to reward you for bringing back the children?”

  “It was?” said the captain, suddenly realizing he’d also clean forgotten he was broke! And now the wrath of Onswud lay close ahead.

  “Gold and jewel stones would have been just right, of course!” she said, “but unfortunately, while there’s no doubt a lot of it on Karres somewhere, we never got around to looking for it. And we haven’t money—none that you could use, that is!”

  “No, I don’t suppose you do,” the captain agreed sadly.

  “However,” said Toll, “we’ve all been talking about it in the town, and so we’ve loaded a lot of things aboard your ship that we think you can sell at a fine profit!”

  “Well now,” the captain said gratefully, “that’s fine of—”

  “There are furs,” said Toll, “the very finest furs we could fix up—two thousand of them!”

  “Oh!” said the captain, bravely keeping his smile. “Well, that’s wonderful!”

  “And essences of perfume!” said Toll. “Everyone brought one bottle of their own, so that’s eight thousand three hundred and twenty-three bottles of perfume essences—all different!”

  “Perfume!” said the captain. “Fine, fine—but you really shouldn’t—”

  “And the rest of it,” Toll concluded happily, “is the green Lepti liquor you like so much, and the Wintenberry jellies!” She frowned. “I forgot just how many jugs and jars,” she admitted, “but there were a lot. It’s all loaded now. And do you think you’ll be able to sell all that?” she smiled.

  “I certainly can!” the captain said stoutly. “It’s wonderful stuff, and there’s nothing like it in the Empire.”

  Which was very true. They wouldn’t have considered miffel-furs for lining on Karres. But if he’d been alone he would have felt like he wanted to burst into tears.

  The witches couldn’t have picked more completely unsalable items if they’d tried! Furs, cosmetics, food and liquor—he’d be shot on sight if he got caught trying to run that kind of merchandise into the Empire. For the same reason that they couldn’t use it on Nikkeldepain—they were that scared of contamination by goods that came from uncleared worlds!

  He breakfasted alone next morning. Toll had left a note beside his plate, which explained in a large, not too legible script that she had to run off and fetch the Leewit; and that if he was gone before she got back she was wishing him good-by and good luck.

  He smeared two more buns with Wintenberry jelly, drank a large mug of cone-seed coffee, finished every scrap of the omelet of swan hawk eggs and then, in a state of pleasant repletion, toyed around with his slice of roasted Bollem liver. Boy, what food! He must have put on fifteen pounds since he landed on Karres.

  He wondered how Toll kept that sleek figure.

  Regretfully, he pushed himself away from the table, pocketed her note for a souvenir, and went out on the porch. There a tear-stained Maleen hurled herself into his arms.

  “Oh, captain!” she sobbed. “You’re leaving—”

  “Now, now!” the captain murmured, touched and surprised by the lovely child’s grief. He patted her shoulders soothingly. “I’ll be back,” he said rashly.

  “Oh, yes, do come back!” cried Maleen. She hesitated and added: “I become marriageable two years from now. Karres time—”

  “Well, well,” said the captain, dazed. “Well, now—”

  He set off down the path a few minutes later, with a strange melody tinkling in his head. Around the first curve, it changed abruptly to a shrill keening which seemed to originate from a spot some two hundred feet before him. Around the next curve, he entered a small, rocky clearing full of pale, misty, early-morning sunlight and what looked like a slow-motion fountain of gleaming rainbow globes. These turned out to be clusters of large, vari-hued soap bubbles which floated up steadily from a wooden tub full of hot water, soap and the Leewit. Toll was bent over the tub; and the Leewit was objecting to a morning bath, with only that minimum of interruptions required to keep her lungs pumped full of a fresh supply of air.

  As the captain paused beside the little family group, her red, wrathful face came up over the rim of the tub and looked at him.

  “Well, Ugly,” she squealed, in a renewed outburst of rage, “who you staring at?” Then a sudden determination came into her eyes. She pursed her lips.

  Toll up-ended her promptly and smacked the Leewit’s bottom. “She was going to make some sort of a whistle at you,” she explained hurriedly. “Perhaps you’d better get out of range while I can keep her head under. And good luck, captain!”

  Karres seemed even more deserted than usual this morning. Of course, it was quite early. Great banks of fog lay here and there among the huge dark trees and the small bright houses. A breeze sighed sadly far overhead. Faint, mournful bird-cries came from still higher up—it could have been swan hawks reproaching him for the omelet.

  Somewhere in the distance, somebody tootled on a wood-instrument, very gently.

  He had gone halfway up the path to the landing field, when something buzzed past him like
an enormous wasp and went CLUNK! into the bole of a tree just before him.

  It was a long, thin, wicked-looking arrow. On its shaft was a white card; and on the card was printed in red letters:

  STOP, MAN OF NIKKELDEPAIN!

  The captain stopped and looked around slowly and cautiously. There was no one in sight. What did it mean?

  He had a sudden feeling as if all of Karres were rising up silently in one stupendous, cool, foggy trap about him. His skin began to crawl. What was going to happen?

  “Ha-ha!” said Goth, suddenly visible on a rock twelve feet to his left and eight feet above him. “You did stop!”

  The captain let his breath out slowly.

  “What else did you think I’d do?” he inquired. He felt a little faint.

  She slid down from the rock like a lizard and stood before him. “Wanted to say good-by!” she told him.

  Thin and brown, in jacket, breeches, boots, and cap of gray-green rock-lichen color, Goth looked very much in her element. The brown eyes looked up at him steadily; the mouth smiled faintly; but there was no real expression on her face at all. There was a quiverful of those enormous arrows slung over her shoulder, and some arrow-shooting gadget—not a bow—in her left hand.

  She followed his glance.

  “Bollem hunting up the mountain,” she explained. “The wild ones. They’re better meat—”

  The captain reflected a moment. That’s right, he recalled; they kept the tame Bollem herds mostly for milk, butter, and cheese. He’d learned a lot of important things about Karres, all right!

  “Well,” he said, “good-by, Goth!”

  They shook hands gravely. Goth was the real Witch of Karres, he decided—more so than her sisters, more so even than Toll. But he hadn’t actually learned a single thing about any of them.

  Peculiar people!

  He walked on, rather glumly.