The Witches of Karres

by James H. Schmiz

  “GRAZEEM!” a great voice shouted deafeningly in the fog above them. “Grazeem! Grazeem!… Grazeem…” The word seemed to echo away into the distance. Then there was more shouting all around them by the same mighty voice.

  “What’s the yelling about?” the captain asked in what he felt would be Captain Mung’s impatient manner.

  “Moander talking to the other machines,” said the grik-dog. “Got a different language for each of them — don’t know why. It’s just a big, dumb machine, like they said.”

  “Pul, you—”

  “S’all right, Goth,” the grik-dog told the Sprite. “ ‘Grazeem’ means ‘all units.’ Moander’s talking to all of them now. Machine that was listening to us won’t till Moander stops again. You got something to say, better say it!”

  “Guess she’s right, Captain!” Goth-Hantis said hurriedly. “Vatch got us into Moander’s place on the Worm World, our time. Haven’t relled it, so it’s not here. Got any ideas?”

  “Not yet. You?”

  “Uh-uh. Just been here a few minutes.”

  “The vatch figures there’s something we can do if we’re smart enough to spot it,” the captain said. “Keep your minds ticking! If somebody sees something and we can’t talk, say, uh—”

  “Starkle?” suggested the grik-dog.

  “Eh? All right, starkle. That will mean ‘attention!’ or ‘notice that!’ or ‘get ready!’ or ‘be careful!’ and…”

  “Starkle!” said the grik-dog. “All-units talk’s stopping!”

  The captain couldn’t tell much difference in the giant shouting, but again they probably could trust the Leewit in that. Whatever machine had been listening to them had begun to listen again. Goth-Hantis was glancing about, the image’s big, pointed, furry ears twitching realistically.

  “Looks like we’ve started to move,” she announced. “Probably going to Moander’s laboratory, like he said…”

  The fog substance enveloping the spherical hollow which contained them — and which must be the interior of a globular force field — was streaming past with increasing swiftness. There was no sensation of motion, but the appearance of it was that the globe was rushing on an upward slant through the gigantic structure on the surface of Manaret, Moander’s massive stronghold, which the captain had glimpsed in a screen view during his talk with Cheel the Lyrd-Hyrier. The fog darkened and lightened successively about them, giving the impression that they were being passed without pause through one section of the interior after another. Sounds came now and then, presumably those of working machine units; and mingling with them, now distant, now from somewhere nearby, the shouted commands of Moander resounded and dropped away behind them.

  Then, suddenly, there was utter silence… the vast, empty, icy kind of silence an audio pickup brings in from space. There were blurs of shifting color in the fog substance ahead and on all sides; and the fog no longer was rushing past but clinging densely about the globe, barely stirring. Evidently they had hurtled out of the stronghold and were in space above Manaret — and if Moander chose to deactivate the field about them now, the captain thought, neither the vatch’s planning nor any witch tricks his companions knew could keep their lives from being torn from them by the unpleasantly abrupt violence of the void.

  It seemed a wrong moment to move or speak, and Goth and the Leewit appeared to feel that, too. They stood still together, waiting in the cold, dark stillness of space while time went by — a minute, or perhaps two or three minutes. The vague colors in the fog which clung about the force field shifted and changed slowly. What the meaning of that was the captain couldn’t imagine. There was nothing to tell them here whether the globe was still in motion or not.

  But then a blackness spread out swiftly ahead and the globe clearly was moving towards it. The blackness engulfed them and they remained surrounded by it for what might have been a minute again, certainly no longer, before the globe slid out into light. After a moment then, the captain discovered that the fog was thinning quickly about them. He began to make out objects through it and saw that the force field had stopped moving.

  They were within a structure, perhaps a large ship, which must be stationed in space above the surface of Manaret. The force globe was completely transparent, and as the last wisps of fog stuff steamed away, they saw it had stopped near the center of a long, high room. The only way the captain could tell they were still enclosed by it was that they were not standing on the flooring of the room but perhaps half an inch above it, on the solid transparency of a force field.

  Almost as he realized this, the field went out of existence. There was the small jolt of dropping to the floor. Then he was in the room, with the images of a Nartheby Sprite and a grik-dog standing beside him.

  The room, which was a very large one, had occupants. From their appearance and immobility, these might have been metal statues, many of them modeled after various living beings; but the captain’s immediate feeling was that they were something other than statues. The largest sat on a throne-like arrangement filling the end of the room towards which he, Goth, and the Leewit faced. It could have been an obese old idol, such as primitive humanity might have worshipped; the broad, cruel face was molded in the pattern of human features, with pale blank disks for eyes which seemed to stare down at the three visitors. It was huge, towering almost to the room’s ceiling, which must have been at least seventy feet overhead. Except for the eye-disks, the shape seemed constructed of the same metal as the throne on which it sat — rough-surfaced metal of a dark-bronze hue which gave the impression of great age and perhaps was intended to do so.

  A round black table, raised six feet from the floor, stood much closer to the center of the room; in fact, not more than twenty feet from the captain. On it another bronze shape sat cross-legged. This one was small, barely half the size of a man. It was crudely finished, looked something like an eyeless monkey. In its raised right hand it held a bundle of tubes, which might have been intended to represent a musical instrument, like a set of pipes. The blind head was turned towards this device.

  The remaining figures, some thirty or forty of them and no two alike, stood or squatted in two rows along the wall on either side of the captain and the witch sisters, spaced a few feet apart. Most of these were of more than human size; almost all were black, often with the exception of the eyes. Several, including a menacing, stern-faced warrior holding a gun, seemed modeled after humanity; and across from the warrior stood a black-scaled image which might have been that of Cheel, the Lyrd-Hyrier lord of Manaret. None of the others were recognizable as beings of which the captain had heard. The majority were shapes of nightmare to human eyes.

  This was Moander’s laboratory? Except for its disquieting assembly of figures, the great room seemed to hold nothing. The captain glanced up towards the ceiling. Much of that was a window, or a screen which served as a window. Through it one looked into space. And space was alive with the colors they had seen vaguely through the fog enclosing the force globe. Here they blazed brilliantly and savagely, and he could guess at once what they were — reflections of the great network of energy barriers Moander and his Nuris had constructed about the Worm World between the dead suns of the Tark Nembi Cluster. As he gazed, something edged into view at one side of the screen, blotting out the fiery spectacle. It was the metallic surface of Manaret. The structure of which this room was a part appeared to be rotating, turning the viewscreen now towards space, now to the Worm World far below it.

  The witch children stood quietly beside him in their concealing shapes, glancing about with wary caution. Then came a softly hissed whisper:

  “Starkle!”

  The head of the great black warrior figure against the right wall turned slowly until the sullen face seemed to stare at them. The arm holding the gun lifted, swung the weapon around, and pointed it in their direction. Then the figure was still again — but there was no question that the weapon was a real weapon, the warrior a piece of destructive machinery perhaps as
dangerous as the Sheem Robot. Nor was it alone in covering them. Across from it, beside the black Lyrd Hyrier image, a figure which seemed part beaked and long-necked bird, part many-legged insect, had moved at the same time, drawing back its head and turning the spear-tip of the beak towards them — a second weapon swiveled into position to bear on Moander’s uninvited visitors.

  “Starkle!” muttered the grik-dog. “Double starkle!”

  The Leewit didn’t mean the warrior and the bird-thing with that because the grik dog was staring straight ahead at the bronze monkey-figure which sat cross legged on the black table. At first the captain could see no change there; then he realized the monkey’s mouth had begun to move and that faint sounds were coming from it… Double-starkle? Perhaps something familiar about those sounds…

  Yes, he thought suddenly, that was Moander’s voice the monkey was producing — a miniaturized version of the brazen shouting which had followed the force-globe through the stronghold, the robot issuing its multilingual commands to the submachines…

  “I am Moander!” a giant voice said slowly above them.

  They looked up together. The voice had come from the direction of the head of the big idol shape. As they stared at it, the eye disks in the idol head turned red.

  “I am Moander!” stated a shape at the far end of the row along the wall on the right.

  “I am Moander!” said the shape beside it.

  “I am Moander… I am Moander… I am Moander…,” each of the shapes along the wall declared in turn, the phrase continuing to the end of the room, then shifting to the left wall and returning along it until it wound up with the shape which stood nearest the enthroned idol on that side. Then the monkey-shape, which had sat silent while this went on, turned its eyeless head around to the captain.

  “I am Moander and the voice of Moander!” the tiny voice told him and the witch sisters, and the blind head swung back towards the bundle of pipes the shape held in one hand.

  “Yes,” said the big idol voice. “I am Moander, and each of these is Moander. But things are not as they seem, witch people! Look up — straight up!”

  They looked. A section of Manaret’s surface showed in the great screen on the ceiling again, and on it, seen at an angle from here, stood Moander’s stronghold. Even at such a distance it looked huge and massively heavy, the sloping sides giving the impression that it was an outcropping of the ship-planet’s hull.

  “The abode of Moander the God. A holy place,” said the idol’s voice. “Deep within it lies Moander. About you are Moander’s thoughts, Moander’s voice, the god shapes which Moander in his time will place on a thousand worlds so that a thousand mortal breeds may show respect to a shape of Moander… But Moander is not here.

  “Do not move. Do not speak. Do not force me to destroy you. I know what you are. I sensed the alien klatha evil you carry when you came out of time. I sensed your appearance was not your shape. I sensed your minds blocked against me, and by that alone I would know you, witch people!

  “I listened to your story. If you were the innocent mortals you pretended to be, you would not have been taken here. You would have gone to the breeding vats in Manaret to feed my faithful Nuris, who always hunger for more mortal flesh.

  “My enemies are taken here. Many have stood where you stand before the shape of Moander. Some attempted resistance, as you are attempting it. But in the end they yielded and all was well. Their selves became part of the greatness of Moander, and what they knew I now know.”

  The voice checked abruptly. The monkey-shape on the black table, which again had been sitting silently and unmoving while the idol spoke, at once resumed its tiny chatter. And now it was clear that the device in its hand was a speaker through which Moander’s instructions were transmitted to the stronghold, to be amplified there into the ringing verbal commands which controlled the stronghold’s machinery. The small shape went on for perhaps forty seconds, then stopped, and the voice which came from the great idol figure resumed in turn, “But I cannot spare you my full attention now. In their folly and disrespect, your witch kind is attacking Tark Nembi in force. I believe you were sent through time to distract me. I will not be distracted. My Nuris need my guidance in accomplishing the destruction of the world I have cursed. Their messages press on me.”

  It checked again. The small shape spoke rapidly again, paused.

  “…press on me,” the idol’s voice continued. “My control units need my guidance or all would lapse into confusion. The barriers must be maintained. Manaret’s energies must be fed the Nuris to hold high the attack on Karres the Accursed.

  “I cannot give you much attention, witch people. You are not significant enough. Open your minds to me now and your selves will be absorbed into Moander and share Moander’s glory. Refuse and you die quickly and terribly—”

  For the third time, it broke off. The monkey-shape instantly piped Moander’s all units signal, “Grazeem! Grazeem! Grazeem!,” at the device it held and rattled on. Holding his breath, the captain darted a sideways glance at his witches, found them staring intently at him. The Sprite nodded, very slightly. The grik-dog crouched. The captain reached for it as it sprang up at him, noticed it dissolved back into the Leewit as he caught it. He didn’t notice much else because he was sprinting headlong towards the black table and the talkative monkey-shape with the Leewit by then. But there were metallic crashings to right and left, along with explosive noises…

  The monkey had stopped talking before he reached the table, sat there cross legged and motionless. Its metal jaw hung down, twisted sideways; the arm which held the transmission device had come away from the rest of it and dropped to the table top. There was renewed crashing farther down the room — Goth was still at work. The captain swung the Leewit up on the table, grasped the detached metal arm and held the transmitter before her. She clamped both hands about it and sucked in her breath -

  It wasn’t exactly a sound then. It was more like having an ice-cold dagger plunge slowly in through each eardrum. The pair of daggers met in the captain’s brain and stayed there, trilling. The trilling grew and grew.

  Until there was a noise nearby like smashing glass. The hideous sensation in his head stopped. The Leewit, sitting on the table beside the frozen, slack-jawed monkey-shape, scowled at the shattered halves of the transmitting instrument in her hands.

  “Knew it!” she exclaimed.

  The captain glanced around dizzily as Goth came trotting up, in her own shape. The rows of figures along the wall were in considerable disarray — machines simply weren’t much good after a few small but essential parts had suddenly vanished from them. The black warrior’s face stared sternly from a pile of the figure’s other components. The bird-insect’s head dangled beak down from a limp neck section, liquid fire trickling slowly like tears along the beak and splashing off the floor. The big idol’s eye disks had disappeared and smoke poured out through the holes they’d left and wreathed about the thing’s head.

  The ceiling screen wasn’t showing Moander’s stronghold at the moment, but a section of Manaret’s surface was sliding past. The structure should soon be in view. The captain looked at the Leewit. She must have held that horrid whistle of hers for a good ten seconds before the transmitting device gave up! For ten seconds, gigantically amplified, destructive non-sound had poured through every section of the stronghold below.

  And every single simple-minded machine unit down there had been tuned in and listening -

  “There it comes!” murmured Goth, pointing.

  Faces turned up, they watched the stronghold edge into sight on the screen. A stronghold no longer — jagged cracks marked its surface, and puffs of flaming substance were flying out of the cracks. Farther down, its outlines seemed shifting, flowing, disintegrating. Slowly, undramatically, as it moved through the screen, the titanic construction was crumbling down to a mountainous pile of rubble.

  The Leewit giggled. “Sure messed up his holy place!” Then her head tilted to the side;
her small nostrils wrinkled fastidiously.

  “And here comes you-know-who!” she added.

  Yes, here came Big Wind-Voice, boiling up out of nothing as Manaret’s barrier systems wavered. A gamboling invisible blackness… peals of rolling vatch laughter -

  OH, BRAVE AND CLEVER PLAYER! NOW THE MIGHTY OPPONENT LIES STRICKEN! NOW YOU AND YOUR PHANTOM FRIENDS SHALL SEE WHAT REWARD YOU HAVE EARNED!

  This time there was no blurring, no tumbling through grayness. The captain simply discovered he stood in a vast dim hall, with Goth and the Leewit standing on his right. The transition had been instantaneous. Row on row of instruments lined the walls to either side, rising from the blank black floor to a barely discernible arched ceiling. He had looked at that scene only once before and then as a picture projected briefly into his mind by Cheel, the Lyrd-Hyrier prince, but he recognized it immediately. It was the central instrument room of Manaret, the working quarters of the lost synergizer.

  And it was clear that all was not well here. The instrument room was a bedlam of mechanical discord, a mounting, jarring confusion. The controls of Manaret’s operating systems had been centered by Moander in his fortress; and with the fall of that fortress the pattern was disrupted. But the Lyrd-Hyrier must have been prepared long since to handle this situation whenever it should arise -

  They relled the vatch; it was not far away. Otherwise, except for the raving instruments, the three of them seemed alone in this place for several seconds following their arrival. Then suddenly they had company.

  A globe of cold gray brilliance appeared above and to the left of them some thirty feet away. Fear poured out from it like an almost tangible force; and only by the impact of that fear was the captain able to tell that this thing of sternly blazing glory was the lumpy crystalloid mass of the Manaret synergizer, returned to its own place and transformed in it. An instant later a great viewscreen flashed into sight halfway down the hall, showing the hugely enlarged purple-scaled head of a Lyrd-Hyrier. The golden-green eyes stared at the synergizer, shifted quickly to the three human figures near it. The captain was certain it was Cheel even before the familiar thought-flow came.