The Witches of Karres Read online

  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 about 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 turned 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.

  "One thing is true though, sir," Vezzarn concluded earnestly. "I've been telling you this because you asked, and because you should know there's danger in it. But it's a bad business otherwise to talk much about Worm Weather or what it means—even to think about it too long. That's been known a long time. Where there's loose talk about Worm Weather, there Worm Weather will go finally. It's as if they can feel the talk and don't like it. So nobody wants to say much about it. It's safer to take no more interest in them than you can help. Though it's hard to keep from thinking about the devil-things when you see the sky turning yellow above your head!

  "Now I'll wish you good-night, Dani and Captain Aron. It's time and past for supper and a nightcap for old Vezzarn—who talks a deal more than he should, I think."

  * * *

  "Didn't know the Worm stuff had been around here," Goth remarked thoughtfully as they turned away from the groundcab that had brought them back up to their house.

  "You already knew about that, eh?" The captain nodded. "I had the impression you did. Got something to tell you—but we'd better wait till we're private."

  "Uh-huh!"

  She went up the winding stairway to the living room while the captain took the groceries they'd picked up in the port shopping area to the kitchen. When he followed her upstairs he saw an opaque cloudy shimmering just beyond the living room door, showing she'd switched on their spy-proofing gadget. The captain stepped into the shimmering and it cleared away before him. The watch-shaped device lay on the table in the center of the room, and Goth was warming her hands at the fireplace. She looked around.

  "Well," he said, "now we can talk. Did Vezzarn have his story straight?"

  Goth nodded. "Pretty straight. That Worm World isn't really a world at all, though."

  "No? What is it?"

  "Ship," Goth told him. "Sort of a spaceship. Big one! Big as Uldune or Karres. . . . Better tell me first what you were going to."

  "Well—" The captain hesitated. "It's tha
t description Vezzarn gave of the Nuris . . . ." He reported his dream, the feelings it had aroused in him, and what had been going on when he woke up. "Apparently there really was Worm Weather over Zergandol that night," he concluded.

  "Uh-huh!" Goth's teeth briefly indented her lower lip. Her eyes remained reflectively on his face.

  "But I don't have any explanation for the dream," the captain said. "Unless it was the kind of thing Vezzarn was talking about."

  "Wasn't exactly a dream, captain. Nuris have a sort of klatha. You were seeing them that way. Likely, they knew it."

  "What makes you think that?" he asked, startled.

  "Nuris hunt witches," Goth explained.

  "Hunt them? Why?"

  She shrugged. "They've figured out too much about the Manaret business on Karres. . . . Other reasons, too!"

  Now he became alarmed. "But then you're in danger while we're on Uldune!"

  "I'm not," Goth said. "You were in danger. You'd be again if we got Worm Weather anywhere near Zergandol."

  "But . . ."

  "You got klatha. Nuris'd figure you for a witch. We'll fix that now!"

  She moved out before him, facing him, lifted a finger, held it up in front of his eyes, a few feet away. Her face grew dead serious, intent. "Watch the way it moves!"

  He followed the fingertip as it drew a fleeting, wavy line through the air. Goth's hand stopped, closed quickly to a fist as if cutting off the line behind it. "You do it now," she said. "In your head."

  "Draw the same kind of line, you mean?"

  "Uh-huh."

  She waited while the captain went through some difficult mental maneuverings.