Soul Catcher (28 page)

Spirits had energized him. They were spirits
without shape or smell or sound—yet they moved this world. They
moved it! They moved the men in the river meadow. They moved the
aircraft and machines engaged in this primitive contest. They moved
the Innocent who must die. They moved Katsuk, who had become more
spirit than man.

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. Good-evil! 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 goodbye.”

“Goodbye, 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 them. 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
boy. 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

* * * * *

Look for These &
Other Digital Works from WordFire Press

by Frank
Herbert

The Ascension
Factor
(with Bill Ransom)

Pandora’s humans have been recovering land
from its raging seas at an accelerated pace since
The Lazarus
Effect
. The great kelp of the seas, sentient but electronically
manipulated by humans, buffers Pandora’s wild currents to restore
land and facilitate the booming sea trade. New settlements rise
overnight, but children starve in their shadows. An orbiting
assembly station is near completion of Project Voidship, which is
the hope of many for finding a better world.

Pandora is under the fist of an ambitious
clone from hibernation called The Director, who rules with a
sadistic security force led by the assassin Spider Nevi. Small
resistance groups, like the one led by Twisp Queets and Ben Ozette,
have had little effect on his absolute power. The Director controls
the transportation of foodstuffs; uprisings are punished with
starvation.