The Witches of Karres Read online

  "How do you . . . You think that vatch sent us back in time?"

  "Long way back in time!" Goth nodded.

  "How can you be sure? Now you've mentioned it, this could be Karres by its looks! But a lot of worlds—"

  "Uh-uh!" Her forefinger pointed at a shining white mountain peak beyond the rise. "I ought to know that mountain, Captain! That's where I was born . . . or where I'm going to be born, thirty miles from here. Town's going to be in the valley north of it." Goth's hand swept about. "I know all this country—it's Karres!"

  "All right But they could have moved it to the Talsoe System the last time, couldn't they? Let's get in the ship and . . ."

  Goth shook her head. "Not a bit of klatha around except ours and the vatch. There're no witches here yet, believe me! And won't be for another three hundred thousand years anyway—"

  "Three hundred thou . . . !" the captain half shouted. He checked himself. "How do you know that?"

  "Got a little moon here. You'll see it tonight. Karres had one early, but then it smacked down around the north pole and messed things up pretty bad for a while. They figured that must have been a bit more than three hundred thousand years back . . . so we're back before that! Besides, there's the animals. A lot of them aren't so much different from what they're going to be. But they're different. You see?"

  "Yeah, I guess I do!" the captain admitted. He cleared his throat. "It startled me for a moment."

  "Pretty odd, isn't it?" Goth agreed. "No Empire at all yet, no Uldune! Patham—no starships even! Everybody that's there is still back on old Yarthe!" Her head tilted up quickly. "Umm!" she murmured, eyes narrowing a little.

  * * *

  The captain had caught it, too. Vatch sign! Old Windy was somewhere around. Not too close, but definitely present . . . They remained quiet for a minute or two. The impression seemed to grow no stronger in that time. Suddenly it was gone again.

  "Giant-vatch, all right!" Goth remarked a few seconds later. "Brother! You picked yourself a big one, Captain!"

  "They're not all the same then, eh?"

  "Come in all sizes. Bigger they are, the more they can do. That's mostly make trouble, of course! This one's a whale of a vatch!" She frowned. "I don't know . . . ."

  "They can read our minds—human minds, can't they?" asked the captain.

  "Lot of them can."

  "Can they do it from farther away than we can rell them?"

  "Not supposed to be able to do it," said Goth. "But I don't know."

  "Hmm—is there such a thing as a klatha lock that will keep vatches from poking around in your thoughts?"

  "Uh-huh. Takes awfully heavy stuff, though! I don't know how to do that one. There's only three, four people I know that use a vatch lock."

  "Oh?" said the captain, somewhat startled. Goth looked up at him questioningly, then with sudden speculation. "Ummm," she said slowly. She considered a moment again, remarked, "Now there's something I do that works about as good as a lock against vatches. Can't tell you how to do that either, though."

  "Why not?" he asked.

  Goth shrugged. "Don't know how I do it. Born with it, I guess. Takes just a little low intensity klatha. Dab of it on anything particular I don't want anybody to know I'm thinking about, and that's it! Somebody sneaks a look into my mind then, he just can't see it."

  "You sure?" the captain asked thoughtfully.

  "Ought to be! Some real high-powered mind-readers tried it. Wanted to study out how it was done so others could use it. They never did figure that out—but it works just fine! They couldn't even tell there'd been anything blurred."

  "That will be a help now," the captain said.

  "Uh-huh! Vatch isn't going to find out anything from me he shouldn't know about." She cocked her head, looking up at him. "Did you make yourself a vatch lock, Captain?"

  "I think so." He gave her a general description of the process. Goth listened, eyes first round with apprehension, then shining. "Even when I thought directly at it," he concluded, "it didn't seem able to read me."

  "That is a vatch lock then. A vatch lock!" Goth repeated softly. "You're going to be a hot witch, Captain—you wait!"

  "Think so?" He felt pleased but there was too much to worry about at present for the feeling to linger. "Well, let's assume that when we can't rell the vatch, we can talk freely," he said. "And that when we do rell it, we'd better keep shut up about anything important but needn't worry about what we're thinking. . . . But now, what can we do? We've got the Venture but there's no sense in flying around space three hundred thousand years from our time. There's nowhere to go. Is there any possible klatha way you know of we might use to get back?"

  Goth shook her head. Some witches had done some experimentation with moving back in time, but she hadn't heard of anyone going back farther than their own life span. The vatch must have used klatha in bringing them here; but then it was a giant-vatch, with immense powers.

  It looked as if they'd have to depend on the vatch to get them back, too. It was not a reassuring conclusion. The klatha entity was playing a game and regarded them at present as being among its pieces. It had heard that there seemed to be no way to overcome Moander in his stronghold on Manaret and was out to prove it could be done. At best it would consider them expendable pieces. It might also simply decide it had no further use for them and leave them where they were. But as long as the synergizer remained in their custody, they could assume they were still included in the vatch's plans.

  It wasn't a good situation. But at the moment there seemed to be nothing they could do to change it.

  "Olimy found the synergizer and should have been on his way to Karres with it when the Nuris nearly caught him," the captain observed reflectively. "About the same time it was reported the Empire was launching an attack on Karres, and Karres disappeared. There was no word it had showed up again anywhere else before we left Uldune."

  Goth nodded. "Looks like they knew Olimy was coming with the thing and went to meet him."

  "Yes . . . at some previously arranged rendezvous point. Now, you once told me," the captain said, "that Karres was developing klatha weapons to handle the Nuris and was pretty far along with the program."

  "Uh-huh. They might have been all set that way when we left," Goth agreed. "I wasn't told. They weren't far from it."

  "Then the synergizer actually could have been the one thing they were waiting to get before tackling the Worm World. They'd know from their contacts with the Lyrd-Hyrier it wouldn't be long before Moander had so many more Nuris to fight for him that reaching him would become practically impossible . . . ."

  Goth nodded again. "Guess they'll hit Manaret whether they get the synergizer or not!" she remarked. "Looks like they have to. But if they were waiting for it they got a way to use it—and they'd still want it bad, and fast!"

  The captain scowled frustratedly.

  "Even if we were back in our time," he said, "and on our own—meaning no vatch around—the best we could do about it would be to get the thing to Emris! We don't know where Karres is. And we don't know where Manaret is . . . even though I've been there now, in a way."

  "Well, I'm not sure," Goth told him. "Maybe we do know where they are, Captain."

  "Huh? What do you mean?"

  "You said Cheel told you the Nuris were putting up new space barriers between the dead suns all around Manaret—"

  The captain nodded. "So he did."

  "Never heard of but one place where you'd see dead suns all around," Goth said. "And that's in the Chaladoor—the Tark Nembi Cluster. There're people who call it the Dead Suns Cluster. It's another spot everyone keeps away from because when you don't, you don't come back. So the Worm World could have been sitting inside it all the time. . . . And if it's there," Goth concluded, "we ought to be able to find Karres about one jump from Tark Nembi right now."

  The captain grunted. "I bet you're right—and that could be our solution! If we get back and can make a break for the Cluster on the Sheewash Drive
without being stopped by the vatch, we'll give it a try!"

  "Right," said Goth. "Looks like the vatch will have to move first, though."

  "So it does," agreed the captain. "Well—" He sighed. "You say you set up camp with Vezzarn and Hulik around here?"

  Goth came to her feet. "Just a bit behind the rise," she said. "Quarter-mile. Let's go get them—easier than moving the ship."

  Halfway up the slope they turned aside to pick up some items she'd dropped when she caught sight of the captain—a sturdy handmade bow and a long quiver of tree bark out of which protruded the feathered shafts of arrows. Beside these articles lay a pair of freshly killed furry white-and-brown animals tied together by their hind legs. The captain lifted them while Goth slung bow and quiver over her shoulders. "Dinner, eh?" he said. "Didn't take you long to get set up for the pioneering life!"

  "Forgot to tell you about that," said Goth. "Can't quite figure it, but while you were having a talk with the Cheel-thing we've been here eight days . . . ."

  The captain couldn't quite figure it either. Goth filled him in as they went on towards the camp. Neither Hulik do Eldel nor Vezzarn remembered anything between the crash take-off from the planet of the red sun and their awakening in a chill, misty dawn on Karres. Goth had come awake first, by half an hour or so, had known immediately on what world she was, and deduced the rest when the Talsoe Twins lifted above the mountains and the mists thinned enough to show her a small moon still floating in the northern sky. She hadn't informed her companions of their whereabouts in space and time—both were upset enough as it was for a while. Hulik's impulse, when she awoke and discovered Vezzarn stretched out unconscious beside her, was to blast him for a filthy traitor as he lay there. "Couldn't find her gun though—or his—till she'd cooled down again," Goth said with a grin. "Then Vezzarn came to—and he bawled like a baby for an hour."

  "What about?"

  "Because you waited to let him get aboard before you took off. So then he was going to shoot himself rather than face you when you got back. Couldn't find his gun either, though."

  "Looks like you've had your hands full with the two!"

  "Oh, they settled down pretty quick. Hulik's even speaking to Vezzarn again. She's not the worst, that Hulik."

  "No, she isn't," agreed the captain, remembering the bad moments on the ledge of the cliff. "What do they make of the situation?"

  Both seemed to have decided they'd gotten themselves involved in some very heavy witch business and the less they heard about it, the better, Goth said. They hadn't asked questions. She'd told them Captain Aron would be rejoining them, but she didn't know when, and they'd better settle down here for a perhaps lengthy stay.

  She glanced up at him. "Didn't know if you'd show up, really! Specially when it got to be four, five days. Figured it must be the vatch, of course . . . and you never can tell with vatches!"

  But that was a private distress. Outwardly they'd had no problems. Vezzarn, doing what he could to make up for an enormity committed in panic, had a shipshape little camp set up for them on the banks of a creek before evening of the first day, kept it tidy and improved on it daily thereafter, fashioned Goth's hunting gear for her though not without misgivings, tended to the cooking, and was dissuaded with difficulty from charging forth, waving his blaster, whenever sizable specimens of Karres fauna came close enough to be regarded by him as a potential menace to the ladies. Hulik stayed tightened up for some twenty-four hours, keeping a nervous eye on the mountain horizons as if momentarily expecting vast, nameless menaces to begin manifesting there. But on the second day, the autumn warmth of the Talsoe suns seemed to soak what was left of those tensions out of her, and she'd been reasonably relaxed and at ease since.

  "Any idea, by the way," asked the captain, "what we ran into on that world? It does look as if something besides the robot was deliberately out to get us—and nearly made it finally."

  Goth nodded. "Guess something was, Captain! From what Vezzarn and Hulik say, it sounds like you got a bunch of planetaries stirred up when you landed. And some of them can get mighty mean."

  It appeared planetaries were a type of klatha entity native to this universe and bound to the worlds of their origin. They varied widely in every way. Most worlds had some, Goth thought. Karres definitely did; but they were mild, retiring beings who rarely gave indications of their presence. Sometimes they'd been helpful. The world of the red sun evidently harbored a high-powered and aggressive breed which did not tolerate trespassers on what it considered its exclusive domain.

  The arrival at camp was made briefly embarrassing by Vezzarn who began weeping at sight of the captain, then knelt and tried to kiss his hand. Not until the captain announced formally that everybody had forgiven him, this time, would Vezzarn get to his feet again.

  "I'm a rat, sir!" he told the captain earnestly then. "But I'm a grateful rat. You'll see . . . ."

  They left the camp standing as it was, returned to the Venture together. Goth and Vezzarn went off to see what could be done about tidying up the trail of destruction left by the Sheem robot, Hulik following them. The captain closed the lock and settled down at the control desk for a routine engine check.

  It turned out to be non-routine. There was no indication of malfunction of any kind, except for one thing. The engine systems were not delivering power to any of the drives.

  He chewed his lip. Vatch, he thought. It had to be that. Thrust was being developed—smooth, even, heavy thrust. By all physical laws, there was nowhere for it to go except into one of the drives. But it wasn't reaching them.

  He shut the engines down again, reopened the lock. The vatch had made sure they'd stay here until it came for them. There was nothing wrong with the ship—they were merely being prevented from leaving with it. He decided it didn't matter too much. In this time, there was no place they'd want to go in the Venture anyway.

  When he looked around, Hulik do Eldel stood in the entry to the control room, watching him.

  "Come in and sit down," the captain said. "I'm afraid I never really got around to thanking you for helping out with the Agandar!"

  She smiled and came in. After the eight days she'd spent camping out on Karres, Hulik looked perhaps better than she ever had. And she'd looked extremely good in a delicate-featured, elegant way since the first time the captain had seen her. For a moment it became a bit difficult to believe those warm, dark eyes had been sighting down the gun which blasted death at last into the legendary Agandar.

  "I was helping myself out, too, you know!" she remarked. She added, "I heard the engines just now and wondered whether we were leaving."

  "No, probably not for a while," the captain said. He hesitated. "The fact is I don't know when we'll be leaving or where we'll go when we do. We're still in something of a jam, you see. I can't tell you what it's about but I hope things will work out all right. And I'm sorry you're in it with us, but there's nothing I can do about that."

  Hulik was silent a moment. "Did you know I'm an Imperial agent?" she asked.

  "Yango mentioned it."

  "Well, he told the truth for once. I signed up for passage on the Chaladoor run in order to steal the secret drive you were supposed to have on this ship."

  "Hmm, yes!" nodded the captain. "I gathered that. . . . It isn't something that would be of any use to you or the people you work for."

  "I," Hulik said, "had gathered that some two ship-days before the trouble with Yango began. At any rate, if I'm in a jam with you and our little witch, it's because I've worked myself into that position. I suspect I can't be of much further assistance in getting us out of it. If I can, let me know. Otherwise I'll simply try to keep out of the way. I'm considered a capable person, but Karres matters have turned out to be above my head."

  The captain didn't tell her he'd entertained similar feelings off and on. He hoped that when this was over the do Eldel would be among the survivors, if any. But her future looked at least as uncertain as Goth's and his own.

  That
evening they had their supper outside the ship, camp-style, which was Hulik's suggestion. She'd grown fond of this world, she said, felt more comfortable and at home here after a week than she could remember feeling anywhere else. Goth looked pleased in a mildly proprietary way; and Karres came through with a magnificently blazing sunset above the western ranges as the Talsoe Twins sank from sight. The wind died gradually and they sat around a while, talking about inconsequential things carefully remote from the present and themselves. The sky was almost cloudless now. The captain watched a dainty, clean-etched little moon appear, and tried again to think of something he might do besides waiting for the vatch to show its hand. The disconcerting fact still seemed to be, however, that they had to wait for the vatch to act. Goth might have shifted them and the Venture light-years away from here; but literally and figuratively that could get them nowhere that counted. . . . He realized suddenly he'd just heard Goth suggest they all bunk out beside the ship for the night.

  He gave her a quick look. The troops obviously liked the idea at once; after everything that had happened, their cabins in the Venture's passenger compartment might look somewhat lonely and isolated to be passing a sleep period in. But to detach themselves from the ship overnight didn't seem a good notion. Depending on the vatch's whims, they could awaken to find it permanently gone.

  Goth acknowledged his look with no more than a flicker of her lashes, but it was an acknowledgment. So she had something in mind besides reassuring their companions . . . but what?

  Then he felt his hackles lifting and knew the vatch had returned.

  It wasn't close by; he could barely retain a sense of its presence. But it remained around. Goth had grown aware of it before he did—that much was clear. He still didn't see what it had to do with moving out of the ship for the night.

  He waited while the others cleared away supper dishes and utensils, began hauling out bedding, and went back for more. The vatch came closer, lingered, drew back—