The Witches of Karres

by James H. Schmiz

  The captain settled deeper into the chair, blinking drowsily at the bubble of light over the spaceport, which seemed the one area still awake in Zergandol. Afterwards, he couldn’t have said at what point his reflections turned into dream-thoughts. But he did begin to dream.

  It was a vague, half-sleep dreaming, agreeable to start with. Then, by imperceptible degrees, uneasiness came creeping into it, a dim apprehension which strengthened and ebbed but never quite faded. Later he recalled nothing more definite about that part of it, but considerable time must have passed in that way.

  Then the vague, shifting dream imagery gathered, took on form and definite menace. He was aware of color at first, a spreading yellow glow — a sense of something far away but drawing closer. It became a fog of yellow light, growing towards him. A humming came from it.

  Fear awoke in him. He didn’t know of what until he discovered fog wasn’t empty. There were brighter ripplings and flashes within it, a seething of energies. These energies seemed to form linked networks inside the cloud. At the points where they crossed were bodies.

  It would have been difficult to describe those bodies in any detail. They seemed made of light themselves, silhouettes of dim fire in the yellow haze of the cloud. They were like fat worms which moved with a slow writhing; and he had the impression that they were not only alive but aware and alert; also that in some manner they were manipulating the glowing fog and its energies.

  What alarmed him was that this mysterious structure was moving steadily closer. If he didn’t do something he would be engulfed by it.

  He did something. He didn’t know what. But suddenly he was elsewhere, sitting in chilled darkness. The foggy fire and its inhabitants were gone. He discovered he was shaking, and that in spite of the cold air his face was dripping with sweat. It was some seconds before he was able to grasp where he was — still on the fourth-story balcony of the old house they had rented that day in the city of Zergandol.

  So he’d fallen asleep, had a nightmare, come awake from it… And he might, he thought, have been sleeping for several hours because Zergandol looked almost completely blacked out now. Even the spaceport area showed only the dimmest reflection of light. And there wasn’t a sound. Absolute silence enclosed the dark buildings of the old section of the city around him. To the left a swollen red moon disk hung just above the horizon. Zergandol might have become a city of the dead.

  Chilled to the bone by the night air, shuddering under his clothes, the captain looked around. And then up.

  Two narrow building spires loomed blackly against the night sky. Above and beyond them, eerily outlining their tips, was a yellowish haze, a thin, discolored glowing smear against the stars which shown through it. It was fading as the captain stared at it, already very faint. But it was so suggestive of the living light cloud of his dream that his heart began leaping all over again.

  It dimmed further, was gone. Not a trace remained. And while he was still wondering what it all meant, the captain heard the sound of voices. They came from the street below the balcony — two or three people speaking rapidly, in hushed tones.

  They might have been having a nervous argument about something, but it was the Uldunese language, so he wasn’t sure. He heaved himself stiffly out of the chair, moved to the balcony railing and peered down through the gloom. A groundcar was parked in the street, two shadowy, gesticulating figures standing beside it. After some seconds they broke off their discussion and climbed into the car. He heard a metallic click as its door closed. The driving lights came on dimmed, and the car moved off slowly along the street. In the reflection of the lights he’d had a glimpse of markings on its side, which just might have been the pattern of bold squares that was the insignia of the Daal’s police.

  Here and there, as he gazed around now, other lights began coming on in Zergandol. But not too many. The city remained very quiet. Perhaps, he thought, there had been an attempted raid from space by the ships of that infamous pirate, the Agandar, which had now been beaten off. But if there’d been some kind of alert which had darkened the city, he’d slept through the warning; and evidently so had Goth.

  He had never heard of a weapon though which could have produced that odd yellow discoloring of a large section of the night sky. It was all very mysterious. For a moment the captain had the uneasy suspicion that he was still partly caught up in his nightmare and that what he’d thought he’d seen up there had been nothing more real than a lingering reflection of his musings about the ancient evil of Uldune and the space about it.

  Confused and dog-tired, he left the balcony, carefully locking its door behind him, found his bedroom and was soon asleep.

  * * *

  He didn’t tell Goth about his experiences next day. He’d intended to, but when they woke up there was barely time for a quick breakfast before they hurried off to keep an early appointment with Sunnat, Bazim Filish. The partners made no mention of unusual occurrences during the night, and neither did anybody else they met during the course of the crowded day. The captain presently became uncertain whether he hadn’t in fact dreamed up the whole odd business. By evening he was rather sure he had. There was no reason to bore Goth with the account of a dream.

  Within a few days, with so much going on connected with the rebuilding of the Venture and their other plans, he forgot the episode completely. It was several weeks then before he remembered it again. What brought it to mind was a conversation he happened to overhear between Vezzarn, the old Uldunese spacedog they’d hired on as purser, bookkeeper, and general crewhand for the Venture, and one of Vezzarn’s cronies who’d dropped in at the office for a visit. They were talking about something called Worm Weather…

  Meanwhile there’d been many developments, mostly of a favorable nature. Work on the Venture proceeded apace. The captain couldn’t have complained about lack of interest on the side of his shipbuilders. After the first few days either Bazim or Filish seemed always around, supervising every detail of every operation. They were earnest, hardworking, middle-aged men — Bazim big, beefy, and sweaty, Filish lean, weathered, and dehydrated-looking — who appeared to know everything worth knowing about the construction and outfitting of spaceships. Sunnat, the third member of the firm and apparently the one who really ran things, was tall, red headed, strikingly handsome, and female. She could be no older than the captain, but he had the impression that Bazim and Filish were more than a little afraid of her.

  His own feelings about Sunnat were mixed. During their first few meetings she’d been polite, obviously interested in an operation which should net the firm a large, heavy profit, but aloof. Her rare smiles remained cold and her gray-green eyes seemed constantly on the verge of going into a smoldering rage about something. She left the practical planning and work details to Bazim and Filish, while they deferred to her in the financial aspects.

  That had suddenly changed, at least as far as the captain was concerned. From one day to another, Sunnat seemed to have thawed to him; whenever he appeared in the shipyard or at the partners’ offices, she showed up, smiling, pleasant, and talkative. And when he stayed in the little office he’d rented to take care of other business, in a square of the spaceport administration area across from S., B. F., she was likely to drop in several times a day.

  It was flattering at first. Sunnat’s sternly beautiful face and graceful, velvet skinned body would have quickened any man’s pulses; the captain wasn’t immune to their attractiveness. In public she wore a gray cloak which covered her from neck to ankles, but the outfit beneath it, varying from day to day, calculatingly exposed some sizable section or other of Sunnat’s person — sculptured shoulders and back, the flat and pliable midriff, or a curving line of thigh. Her perfumes and hair-styling seemed to change as regularly as the costumes. It became a daily barrage, increasing in intensity, on the captain’s senses; and on occasion his senses reeled. When Sunnat put her hand on his sleeve to emphasize a conversational point or brushed casually along his side as they clambered abo
ut together on the scaffoldings now lining the Venture’s hull, he could feel his breath go short.

  But there still was something wrong about it. He wasn’t sure what except perhaps that when Goth came around he had the impression that Sunnat stiffened inside. She always spoke pleasantly to Goth on such occasions, and Goth replied as pleasantly, in a polite little-girl way, which wasn’t much like her usual manner. Their voices made a gentle duet. But beneath them the captain seemed to catch faint, distant echoes of a duet of another kind — like the yowling of angry jungle cats.

  It got to be embarrassing finally, and he found himself increasingly inclined to avoid Sunnat when he could. If he saw the tall, straight shape in the gray cloak heading across the square towards his office, he was as likely as not to slip quietly out the back door for lunch, leaving instructions with Vezzarn to report that he’d been called out on business elsewhere.

  * * *

  Vezzarn was a couple of decades beyond middle age but a spry and wiry little character, whose small gray eyes didn’t seem to miss much. He was cheery and polite, very good with figures. Above all, he’d logged six passes through the Chaladoor and didn’t mind making a few more — for the customary steep risk pay and with, as he put it, the right ship and the right skipper. The Evening Bird, building in the shipyard, plus Captain Aron of Mulm seemed to meet his requirements there.

  The day the captain recalled the odd dream he’d had during their first night in Zergandol, a man named Tobul had dropped by at the office to talk to Vezzarn. They were distant relatives, and Tobul was a traveling salesman whose routes took him over most of Uldune. He’d been a spacer like Vezzarn in his younger days; and like most spacers, the two used Imperial Universum in preference to Uldunese when they talked together. So the captain kept catching scraps of the conversation in Vezzarn’s cubicle.

  He paid no attention to it until he heard Tobul inquire, “Safe to mention Worm Weather around here at the moment?”

  Wondering what the fellow meant, the captain looked up from his paper work.

  “Safe enough,” replied Vezzarn. “Hasn’t been a touch of it for a month now. You been running into any?”

  “More’n I like, let me tell you! There was a bad bout of it in…” He gave the name of some Uldune locality which the captain didn’t quite get. “Just before I got there. Very bad! Everywhere you went people were still going off into screaming fits. Didn’t hang around there long, believe me!”

  “Don’t blame you.”

  “That evening after I left, I saw the sky starting to go yellow again behind me. I made tracks… They could’ve got hit as bad again that night. Or worse! Course you never hear anything about it.”

  “No.” There was a pause while the captain listened, straining his ears now. The sky going yellow? Suddenly and vividly he saw every detail of that ominous fiery dream-structure again, drifting towards him, and the yellow discoloration fading against the stars above Zergandol… “Seems like it keeps moving farther west and south,” Vezzarn went on thoughtfully. “Ten years ago nobody figured it ever would get to Uldune.”

  “Well, it’s been all around the planet this time!” Tobul assured him. “Longest bout we ever had. And if—”

  The captain lost the rest of it. He’d glanced out the window just then and spotted Sunnat coming across the square. It was a one-way window so she couldn’t see him. He hesitated a moment to make sure she was headed for the office. Once before he’d ducked too hastily out the back entrance and run into her as she was coming through the adjoining building arcade. There was no reason to hurt her pride by letting her know he preferred to avoid her.

  Today she was clearly on her way to see him. The captain picked up his cap, stopped for an instant at Vezzarn’s cubicle.

  “I’ve been gone for a couple of hours,” he announced, “and may not be back for a few more.”

  “Right, sir!” said Vezzarn understandingly. “The chances are you’re at the bank this very moment…”

  “Probably,” the captain agreed, and left. Once outside, he recalled several matters he might as well be taking care of that afternoon; so it was, in fact, getting close to evening before he returned to the office. Tobul had left and Sunnat wasn’t around; but Goth had showed up, and Vezzarn was entertaining her in the darkening office with horror tales of his experiences in the Chaladoor and elsewhere. He told a good story, apparently didn’t exaggerate too much, and Goth, who no doubt could have topped his accounts by a good bit if she’d felt like it, always enjoyed listening to him.

  The captain told him to go on, and sat down. When Vezzarn reached the end of his yarn, he asked, “By the way, just what is that Worm Weather business you and Tobul were talking about today?”

  He got a quick look from Goth and Vezzarn both. Vezzarn appeared puzzled.

  “Just what? I’m not sure I understand, sir,” he said. “We’ve had a good bit of it around Uldune for the past couple of months, and that’s very unusual for these longitudes, of course. But—”

  “I meant,” explained the captain, “what is it?”

  Vezzarn now looked startled. He glanced at Goth, back at the captain.

  “You’re serious? Why, you’re really a long way from home!” he exclaimed. Then he caught himself. “Uh — no offense, sir! No offense, little lady! Where you’re from is none of my foolish business, and that’s the truth… But you’ve never heard of Worm Weather? The Nuris? Manaret, the Worm World?… Moander Who Speaks with a Thousand Voices?”

  “I don’t know a thing about any of them,” the captain admitted. Goth very likely did, now that he thought of it; but she said nothing.

  “Hm!” Vezzarn scratched the grizzled bristles on his scalp, and grimaced. “Hm!” he repeated dubiously. He got up behind his desk, went to the window, glanced out at the clear evening sky and sat down on the sill.

  “I’m not particularly superstitious,” he remarked. “But if you don’t mind, sir, I’ll stay here where I can keep an eye out while I’m on that subject. You’ll know why when I’m done…”

  * * *

  If Vezzarn had been more able to resist telling a good story to someone who hadn’t heard it before, it is likely the captain would not have learned much about Worm Weather from him. The little spaceman became increasingly nervous as he talked on and the world beyond the window continued to darken; his eyes swung about to search the sky every minute or so. But whatever apprehensions he felt didn’t stop him.

  * * *

  Where was the Worm World, dread Manaret? None knew. Some thought it was concealed near the heart of the Chaladoor, in the Sea of Light. Some believed it lay so far to Galactic East that no exploring ship had ever come on it — or if one had, it had been destroyed too swiftly to send back word of its awesome find. Some argued it might be anywhere — a burning world, or a glittering ice sphere sheathed in mile-thick layers of solidified poisonous gas. Any of those guesses could be true, because almost all that was known of Manaret was of its tunneled, splendidly ornamented interior.

  Vezzarn inclined to the theory it was to be found, if one cared to search for it, at some vast distance among the star swarms to Far Galactic East. Year after year, decade after decade, as long as civilized memory went back, the glowing plague of Worm Weather had seemed to come drifting farther westward to harass the worlds of humanity.

  And what was Worm Weather? Eh, said Vezzarn, the vehicles, the fireships of the Nuri worms of Manaret! Hadn’t they been seen riding their webs of force in the yellow-burning clouds, tinging the upper air of the planets they touched with their reflections? He himself was one of the few who had encountered Worm Weather in deep space and lived to tell of it. Two months east of Uldune it had been. There in space it was apparent that the clouds formed globes, drifting as swiftly as the swiftest ships.

  “In the screens we could see the Nuris, those dreadful worms,” Vezzarn said hoarsely, hunched like a dark gnome on the window sill against the dimming city. “And who knows, perhaps they saw us! But we turne
d and ran and they didn’t follow. It was a bold band of boys who crewed that ship; but of the twelve of us, three went mad during the next few hours and never recovered. And the rest couldn’t bring ourselves to slow the ship until we had eaten up almost all our power — so we barely came crawling back to port at last!”

  The captain pushed his palm over his forehead, wiping clammy sweat. “But what are they?” he asked. “What do they want?”

  “What are they? They are the Nuris… What do they want?” Vezzarn shook his head. “Worm Weather comes! Perhaps only a lick of fire in the sky at night. Perhaps nothing else happens…” He paused. “But when they send out their thoughts, sir — then it can be bad! Then it can be very bad!”

  People slept, and woke screaming. Or walked in fear of something for which they had no name. Or saw the glorious and terrible caverns of Manaret opening before them in broad daylight… Some believed they had been taken there, and somehow returned.

  People did vanish when Worm Weather came. People who never were seen again. That was well established. It did not happen always, but it had happened too often…

  Perhaps it wasn’t even the thoughts of the Nuris that poured into a human world at such times, but the thoughts of Moander. Moander the monster, the god, who crouched on the surface of Manaret… who spoke in a thousand voices, in a thousand tongues. Some said the Nuris themselves were no more than Moander’s thoughts drifting out and away endlessly through the universe.

  It had been worse, it seemed, in the old days. There were ancient stories of worlds whose populations had been swept by storms of panic and such wildly destructive insanity that only mindless remnants were later found still huddling in the gutted cities. And worlds where hundreds of thousands of inhabitants had tracelessly disappeared overnight. But those events had been back in the period of the Great Eastern Wars when planets enough died in gigantic battlings among men. What role Manaret had played in that could no longer be said with any certainty.