Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (314 page)

But the most hidden of all were the people! About four thousand of them were supposed to live currently in the town, with as many more scattered about the planet. But you never saw 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 their 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. 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 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.

* * * *

T
hen 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, he 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 strong, slim 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 decide on the best 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 best 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!” exclaimed 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 forget 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 bursting into tears.

The witches could not 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 it was barred on Nikkeldepain—they were that scared of contamination by goods that came from uncleared worlds!

* * * *

H
e 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 sleak 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 upended her promptly and smacked her 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!”

* * * *

K
arres 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 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 device—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.

“Captain!” Goth called after him. He turned.

“Better watch those take-offs,” Goth called, “or you’ll kill yourself yet!”

The captain cussed softly all the way up to the
Venture
.

And the take-off was terrible! A few swan hawks were watching but, he hoped, no one else.

V.

T
here was, of course, no possibility of resuming direct trade in the Empire with the cargo they’d loaded for him. But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Councilor Onswud would let a genuine fortune slip through his hands because of technical embargoes. Nikkeldepain knew all the tricks of interstellar merchandising, and the councilor himself was undoubtedly the slickest unskinned miffel in the Republic.

More hopefully, the captain began to wonder whether some sort of trade might be made to develop eventually between Karres and Nikkeldepain. Now and then he also thought of Maleen growing marriageable two years hence, Karres time. A handful of witch-notes went tinkling through his head whenever that idle reflection occurred.

The calendric chronometer informed him he’d spent three weeks there. He couldn’t remember how their year compared with the standard one.

He found he was growing remarkably restless on this homeward run; and it struck him for the first time that space travel could also be nothing much more than a large hollow period of boredom. He made a few attempts to resume his sessions of small-talk with Illyla, via her picture; but the picture remained aloof.