The Witches of Karres by James E. Schmitz

“I certainly can!” the captain said stoutly. “It’s wonderful stuff, and I’ve never come across anything like it before.”

The last was very true. They wouldn’t have considered miffel fur for lining on Karres. But if he’d been alone he would have felt like bursting into tears. The witches couldn’t have picked more completely unsalable items if they’d tried! Furs, cosmetics, food, and liquor-he’d be shot on sight if he got caught trying to run that kind of merchandise into the Empire. For the same reason it was barred on Nikkeldepain-they were that afraid of contamination by goods that came from uncleared worlds!

He breakfasted alone next morning. Toll had left a note beside his plate which explained in a large rambling script that she had to run off and catch the Leewit, and that if he was gone before she got back she was wishing him goodbye and good luck.

He smeared two more buns with Wintenberry jelly, drank a large mug of cone-seed coffee, finished every scrap of the omelet of swan hawk eggs and then, in a state of pleasant repletion, toyed around with his slice of roasted Bollem liver. Boy, what food! He must have put on fifteen pounds since he landed on Karres.

He wondered how Toll kept that slim figure. Regretfully, he pushed himself away from the table, pocketed her note for a souvenir and went out on the porch. There a tear-stained Maleen buried herself into his arms.

“Oh, Captain!” she sobbed. “You’re leaving-“

“Now, now!” murmured the captain, touched and surprised by the lovely child’s grief. He patted her shoulders soothingly. “I’ll be back,” he said rashly.

“Oh, yes, do come back!” cried Maleen. She hesitated and added, “I become marriageable two years from now-Karres time.”

“Well, well,” said the captain, dazed. “Well, now-“

He set off down the path a few minutes later, a strange melody tinkling in his head. Around the first curve, it changed abruptly to a shrill keening which seemed to originate from a spot some two hundred feet before him. Around the next curve, he entered a small, rocky clearing full of pale, misty, early-morning sunlight and what looked like a slow motion fountain of gleaming rainbow globes. These turned out to be clusters of large, varihued soap bubbles which floated up steadily from a wooden tub full of hot water, soap, and the Leewit. Toll was bent over the tub; and the Leewit was objecting to a morning bath with only that minimum of interruptions required to keep her lungs pumped full of a fresh supply of air.

As the captain paused beside the little family group, her red, wrathful face came up over the rim of the tub and looked at him.

“Well, Ugly,” she squealed, in a renewed outburst of rage, “who are you staring at?” Then a sudden determination came into her eyes. She pursed her lips. Toll upended her promptly and smacked her bottom.

“She was going to make some sort of a whistle at you,” she explained hurriedly. “Perhaps you’d better get out of range while I can keep her head under… And good luck. Captain!”

Karres seemed even more deserted than usual this morning. Of course it was quite early. Great banks of fog lay here and there among the huge dark trees and the small bright houses. A breeze sighed sadly far overhead. Faint, mournful bird-cries came from still higher up-it might have been swan hawks reproaching him for the omelet.

Somewhere in the distance somebody tootled on a wood instrument, very gently. He had gone halfway up the path to the landing field when something buzzed past him like an enormous wasp and went CLUNK! into the bole of a tree just before him. It was a long, thin, wicked-looking arrow. On its shaft was a white card, and on the card was printed in red letters:

STOP, MAN OF NIKKELDEPAIN!

The captain stopped and looked around cautiously. There was no one in sight. What did it mean?

He had a sudden feeling as if all of Karres were rising up silently in one stupendous cool, foggy trap about him. His skin began to crawl. What was going to happen?

“Ha-ha!” said Goth, suddenly visible on a rock twelve feet to his left and eight feet above him. “You did stop!”

The captain let his breath out slowly. “What did you think I’d do?” he inquired. He felt a little faint.

She slid down from the rock like a lizard and stood before him. “Wanted to say goodbye!” she told him. Thin and brown, in jacket, breeches, boots, and cap of gray-green rock lichen color, Goth looked very much in her element. The brown eyes looked up at him steadily; the mouth smiled faintly; but there was no real expression on her face at all. There was a quiver full of those enormous arrows slung over her shoulder and some arrow- shooting device-not a bow-in her left hand. She followed his glance.

“Bollem hunting up the mountain,” she explained. “The wild ones. They’re better meat.”

The captain reflected a moment. That’s right, he recalled; they kept the tame Bollem herds mostly for milk, butter, and cheese. He’d learned a lot of important things about Karres, all right! “Well,” he said, “goodbye Goth!” They shook hands gravely. Goth was the real Witch of Karres, he decided. More so than her sisters, more so even than Toll. But he hadn’t actually learned a single thing about any of them. Peculiar people! He walked on, rather glumly.

“Captain!” Goth called after him. He turned. “Better watch those take-offs,” Goth called, “or you’ll kill yourself yet!”

The captain cussed softly all the way up to the Venture. And the take-off was terrible! A few swan hawks were watching but, he hoped, no one else.

There was, of course, no possibility of resuming direct trade in the Empire with the cargo they’d loaded for him. But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Councilor Onswud would let a genuine fortune slip through his hands because of technical embargoes. Nikkeldepain knew all the tricks of interstellar merchandising, and the councilor was undoubtedly the slickest unskinned miffel in the Republic. It was even possible that some sort of trade might be made to develop eventually between Karres and Nikkeldepain.

Now and then he also thought of Maleen growing marriageable two years hence, Karres time. A handful of witch notes went tinkling through his head whenever that idle reflection occurred.

The calendric chronometer informed him he’d spent three weeks there. He couldn’t remember how their year compared with the standard one. He discovered presently that he was growing remarkably restless on this homeward run. The ship seemed unnaturally quiet-that was part of the trouble. The captain’s cabin in particular and the passage leading past it to the Venture’s old crew quarters had become as dismal as a tomb. He made a few attempts to resume his sessions of small talk with Illyla via her picture; but the picture remained aloof.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong. Leaving Karres was involved in it, of course; but he wouldn’t have wanted to stay on that world indefinitely, among its hospitable but secretive people. He’d had a very agreeable, restful interlude there; but then it clearly had been time to move on. Karres wasn’t where he belonged. Nikkeldepain…?

He found himself doing a good deal of brooding about Nikkeldepain, and realized one day, without much surprise, that if it weren’t for Illyla he simply wouldn’t be going back there now. But where he would be going instead, he didn’t know.

It was puzzling. He must have been changing gradually these months, though he hadn’t become too aware of it before. There was a vague, nagging feeling that somewhere was something he should be doing and wanted to be doing. Something of which he seemed to have caught momentary glimpses of late, but without recognizing it for what it was. Returning to Nikkeldepain, at any rate, seemed suddenly like walking back into a narrow, musty cage in which he had spent too much of his life…

Well, he thought, he’d have to walk back into it for a while again anyway. Once he’d found a way to discharge his obligations there, he and Illyla could start looking for that mysterious something else together.

The days went on and he learned for the first time that space travel could become nothing much more than a large hollow period of boredom. At long last, Nikkeldepain II swam up in the screens ahead. The captain put the Venture in orbit, and broadcast the ship’s identification number. Half an hour later Landing Control called him. He repeated the identification number, added the ship’s name, owner’s name, his name, place of origin, and nature of cargo.

The cargo had to be described in detail. It would be attached, of course; but at that point he could pass the ball to Onswud and Onswud’s many connections.

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