Katsuk thought: I must do this thing to the perfection which the old gods have ordered, It must have the unmistakable spirit pattern that all men may understand it: good and evil bound one to the other by unbreakable form, the circle completed. I must keep faith with my past. Goodevil! One thing. That is what I do.
With inward vision, he sensed elk horn lances in the dark all around him. Their shafts were trimmed with tufted bear fur. They were held by people from the past. Those people came from the time when men had lived with the land and not against it. He dropped his gaze to his hand. The shape of it was there, but details were lost in shadow. Memory provided the image: Bee's slug-white accusation in his skin.
Katsuk thought: Any man may emulate the bee. A man may sting the entire universe if he does it properly. He must only find the right nerve to receive his barb. It must be an evil thing I do, with the good visible only when they turn it over. The shape of hate must be revealed in it, and betrayal and anguish and the insanities we all share. Only later should they see the love.
David sensed undercurrents in the silence. He found himself afraid for Katsuk and of him. The man had become once more that wild creature who had bound his captive's arms and half dragged him to the cave a night's march from Six Rivers Camp.
What's he thinking now? David wondered. And he said: "Katsuk, shouldn't you come back to bed?"
Katsuk heard two questions in the boy's words, one on the surface and one beneath. The second question asked: "What can I do to help you?"
"Do not worry about me, Hoquat," Katsuk said. "It is well with me."
David heard a softness in Katsuk's voice. Sleep lay at the edge of the boy's awareness like a gray cloud. Katsuk was concerned for his captive now. The boy readjusted the blankets around him, shifted closer to the coals in the fire pit. The night was cold.
Katsuk heard the movement as a demonstration of life. He thought in sudden fearful awareness of the thing he had to do in this world of flesh and time. Would people misinterpret his actions?
The spirits had summoned him to perform an artistic act. It would be a refinement of blood revenge, a supreme example to be appreciated by this entire world. His own people would understand this much of it. His own people had blood revenge locked into their history. They would be stirred in their innermost being. They would recognize why it had been done in the ancient way -- a mark upon raw earth, an incantation, a bow untouched by steel, a death arrow with a stone head, the down of sea ducks sprinkled upon the victim. They would see the circle and this would lead them to the other meanings within this act.
What of the hoquat, though? Their primitive times lay farther back, although they were more violent. They had hidden their own violence from their surface awareness and might not recognize Katsuk's ritual. Realization would seep upward from the spirit side, though. The very nature of the Innocent's death could not be denied.
"I have in truth become Soul Catcher," Katsuk said, realizing he had spoken aloud only after the words were uttered.
"What'd you say?" The boy's voice was heavy with sleep.
"I am the creature of spirits."
"Are you sick again, Katsuk?" The boy was coming back from sleep, his tone worried.
"I no longer have the Cedar sickness, Hoquat."
His flesh gripped by anguish, Katsuk thought: Only one thing remains. The Innocent must ask me for the arrow. He must show that he is ready. He must give me his spirit wish.
Silently, Katsuk prayed: "O, Life Giver, now that you have seen the way a part of your all-powerful being goes, put all of you that way. Bring the circle to completion."
Somewhere down the river behind Katsuk, a man shouted. It was a hoarse sound, words unintelligible but full of menace.
David started from sleep. "What was that?"
Katsuk did not turn toward the sound. He thought: It must be decided now. He said: "The searchers have found us."
"People coming?"
"Your people are coming, Hoquat."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure. That was where I went walking in my forest, Hoquat. I went down to the meadow. There was a camp in the meadow. The people from that camp will be here by daylight."
David heard the words with mounting panic. "What're we going to do?"
"We?"
"You've gotta run, Katsuk!" Even as he spoke, David felt the mixture of reason and unreason in his words. But the demand for flight was larger than any other consideration.
"Why must we run?" Katsuk asked. He sensed the spirit guiding the boy's reason through a maze of panic.
"You can't let them catch you!"
Katsuk spoke with the calming presence of his vision: "Where would I run? I am still weak from the Cedar sickness. I could not go far."
David dropped the blankets from his shoulders, jumped up. The man's serenity outraged him. "I'll help you!"
"Why would you help me?"
"Because . . . because they. . . ."
"Because they will kill me?"
How could the man be so calm? David asked himself. And he blurted: "Katsuk! You've gotta run!"
"I cannot."
"You've just gotta!" The boy clutched up the blankets, thrust them across the glowing fire pit at Katsuk. "Here! Take the blankets and go hide on the hill. There must be someplace to hide up there. I'll tell 'em you left yesterday."
"Why would you do such a thing?"
Katsuk's patience filled David with panic. He said: "Because I don't want you caught . . . and put in jail."
"Hoquat, Hoquat," Katsuk reasoned, "until these past few weeks I've lived all my life in cages."
The boy was frantic now. "They'll put you in jail!"
"No. They will kill me."
David immediately saw the logic of this. Katsuk had murdered a man. David said: "I won't tell them about that guy."
"What . . . guy?"
"You know! The hiker, the guy you . . . You know!" How could Katsuk be this stupid?
"But they will kill me because I kidnapped you."
"I'll tell 'em I came of my own free will."
"Did you?"
"Yes!"
Katsuk thought: Now, the spirits guide us both. The Innocent had not yet asked for the consecrated arrow. He was not yet ready. But the circle was closing. Katsuk said: "But what about my message?"
"What message?" There he went, talking crazy again!
"The spirit message I must send to the whole world," Katsuk explained.
"I don't care about your message! Send it! Just don't let them catch you!"
Katsuk nodded. Thus it went. He said: "Then it is your wish -- your spirit wish, that I send my message?"
"Yes! Only hurry. I can hear them coming."
Katsuk sensed the calmness of his vision sweep upward through his body from the soles of his feet. He spoke formally, as one did to the properly prepared sacrificial victim. "Very well, Hoquat. I admire your courage, your beauty, and your innocence. You are admirable. Let no man doubt that. Let all men and all spirits. . . ."
"Hurry, Katsuk," David whispered. "Hurry."
"Let all men and all spirits," Katsuk repeated, "learn of your qualities, Hoquat. Please sit down and wait here. I will go now."
With a sigh of relief, the boy sank to a sitting position on one of the bed logs beside the shelter's entrance. "Hurry," he whispered. "They're close. I can hear them."
Katsuk cocked his head to listen. Yes, there were voices shouting directions in the dark, a movement seen only by its noises. Still in the formal tone, he said: "Hoquat, your friend Katsuk bids you good-bye."
"Good-bye, Katsuk," the boy whispered.
Quickly now, because he could feel the predawn stillness in the air and see the flashlights of searchers coming through the trees across the river, Katsuk faded back in the shadows to the young spruce where he had secreted the bow and arrow. Murmuring his prayers, he set the bowstring, that hard line of walrus gut. The bow trembled in his hands, then steadied as he felt the power of it. Truly, it
was a god-bow. He nocked the arrow against the bowstring. Now, his vision focused down to the infinity of this instant.
A bird whistled in the trees overhead.
Katsuk nodded his awareness. The animals of this forest knew the moment had come. He felt the spirit power surge all through his muscles. He turned toward the shelter, sensed the morning world begin to glow all around him, all platinum and gray movement. The boy could be seen behind the fire pit, sitting wrapped in a blanket, head bowed, a primordial figure lost to the world of flesh.
Although he heard no sound of it, Katsuk knew the boy was crying. Hoquat was shedding spirit tears for this world.
Steadily, Katsuk drew the bow taut, sighted as his grandfather had taught him. His thumb felt the fletching of the arrow. His fingers held the unpolished cedar of the arrow. All of his senses were concentrated upon this moment -- river, wind, forest, boy, Katsuk . . . all one. In the magic instant, feeling the bow become part of his own flesh, Katsuk released the arrow. He heard the whang of the walrus gut. The sound flew straight across the clearing with the arrow. Straight it went and into the boy's chest.
Hoquat jerked once against the log post at the shelter's entrance. The post held him upright. He did not move again.
For David, there was only the sharp and crashing instant of awareness: He did it! There was no pain greater than the betrayal. Hunting for a name that was not Hoquat, the boy sank into blackness.
Katsuk felt anguish invade his breast. He said: "Soul Catcher, it is done."
Carefully measuring out each step, Katsuk advanced upon the shelter. He stared at the arrow in Hoquat's breast. Now, the circle was complete. It had been a clean and shattering stroke, straight through the heart and probably into the spine. Death had come quickly to the Innocent.
Katsuk felt the ancient watchers of the spirit world departing then. He stood alone, immobile, fascinated by his own creation -- this death.
In the growing daylight, the folds of the boy's clothing took on a semblance of the mossy post behind the body. Part of the body appeared ready to dissipate into the smoke winding upward from the fire pit. It created an illusion of transparency about Hoquat. The boy was gone. The Innocent had left this place in company with the ancient watchers. That was as it should be.
Katsuk heard the searchers then. They were climbing onto the logs which crossed the river. They would be here within minutes. What did it matter now?
Tears coursed down Katsuk's cheeks. He dropped the bow, stumbled forward across the fire pit, fell to his knees, and gathered up the small body.
When Sheriff Pallatt and the search party entered the clearing at the shelter, Katsuk sat with Hoquat's body in his arms, cradling the dead boy like a child, swaying and chanting the death song one sang for a friend. The white down of the sea ducks floated in the damp air all around them.
* * *
About the Author
Frank Herbert has been (among other things) a professional photographer, TV cameraman, oysterdiver, and West Coast newspaperman.
Although he is best known for his epic science fiction novel DUNE, he is the author of some twenty other novels including CHILDREN OF DUNE, THE DOSADI EXPERIMENT, and DESTINATION: VOID. The DUNE trilogy developed in great detail the ecology and inhabitants of a desert-world. His timely and detailed description of an alien ecosystem won Hugo and Nebula awards in 1965.
In 1971 he retreated with his typewriter and family to a six-acre farm on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. One of his major projects is to turn the acreage into an 'ecological demonstration' with a five-year plan showing that a high quality of life can be maintained with minimal drain on the total energy system.
Herbert, Frank Page 21