Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert Page A

anticipated everything in the
universe.
    There was a bloody bruise on the side of
Hoquat’s head. Katsuk put a hand to the boy’s breast, felt the
heart beating, saw vapor form as the boy breathed. The heart, the
breath ... the two things were one.
    Sadness overcame him. Those loggers on the
La Push road! Look what they had done. They had killed Janiktaht.
They had killed this boy beneath his arm here. Not this moment,
perhaps ... but eventually. They had killed Vince, growing cold up
there on the trail. There would be no sons of Vince’s making. No
daughters. No laughter ringing after him. Not now. All killed by
those drunken hoquat. Who knew how many they had killed?
    How could the hoquat not understand these
things they did with their own violence? They remained blind to the
most obvious facts, unwilling to see the consequences of their
behavior. An angel-spirit could come down from heaven and show them
the key to their actions and they would deny that spirit.
    What would the nine drunken hoquat say if
they saw Vince’s dead flesh up there on the trail? They would
become angry. They would say: “We didn’t do that!” They
would say: “We just had a little innocent fun.” They would
say: “Christ! It was just a little klooch! When did a bit of
tail ever hurt one of them?”
    Katsuk thought of Vince walking on the
campus—not innocent enough to satisfy Soul Catcher, but naive in
the rightness of his own judgments. A preliminary sacrifice, one to
mark the way.
    Vince had judged his own people harshly, had
shared the petty rebellions of his time, but had never sent his
thoughts ahead to seek out a way in his world. He had merely
reacted his way into sudden death.
    Katsuk climbed to his feet, threw the
unconscious boy over his shoulder, trudged back up the hill. He
thought:
    I must not pity. I must hide Vince’s body
and then go on. Hoquat stirred on Katsuk’s shoulders, muttered:
“My head ...”
    Katsuk stood the boy on his feet, steadied
him. “You can walk? Very well. We will go on.”
    ***
    Psalm of Katsuk: written on the backs of
trail registry blanks and left at Cedar Cabin:
    You brought your foreign god who sets you
apart from all other life. He presents you with death as His most
precious gift. Your senses are bedazzled by His illusions. You
would give His death to all the life that exists. You pursue your
god with death, threatening Him with death, praying to take His
deadly place.
    You stamp the crucifix across the earth’s
face. Wherever it touches, there the earth dies. Ashes and
melancholy shall be your lot all the rest of your days.
    You are a blend of evil and magnificence.
You torture with your lies. You trample the dead. What blasphemy
resides in your deadly pretensions of love!
    You practice your look of sincerity. You
become a mask, transparent, a grimace with a skull behind it. You
make your golden idols out of cruelty.
    You disinherit me in my own land.
    Yea, by the trembling and fear of my people,
I blight you with all of the ancient curses. You will die in a cave
of your own making, never again to hear birdsong or trees humming
in the wind or the forest’s harp music.
    ***
    David awoke in pale dawn light. He was
trembling with cold and damp. Katsuk’s hand gripped his shoulder,
shaking, shaking. Katsuk wore clothes taken from the dead hiker’s
pack: jeans that were too tight for him over the loincloth, a plaid
shirt. He still wore moccasins and the band of red cedar bark
around his head.
    “You must awaken,” Katsuk said.
    David sat up. A cold, gray world pressed
around him. He felt the damp chill of that world all through his
body. The clothing on Katsuk made him think of the hiker’s death.
Katsuk had murdered! And so swiftly!
    That memory conveyed a deeper chill than
anything in the creeping gray fog of the wilderness.
    “We will go soon,” Katsuk said. “You hear
me, Hoquat?”
    Katsuk studied the boy, seeing him with an
odd clarity, as though the dull gray light around them