Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II (100 page)

He didn't go far—just a few burrow turnings, past a couple of intersections. "This is where we'll sleep." he said, putting Rachel down carefully. "I hereby declare it night."

"We made it out of Monster territory," Roy marveled. "Out of the Cages of Sin, out of the sewers themselves. We're alive and safe and warm."

"And we have no idea," Eric reminded him, "where the hell we are."

Coming awake, Eric paused for a while and thought before announcing the dawn. He caressed his wife as she lay against him, her head on his right shoulder, her mouth nuzzling his chest. Rachel still looked very tired. He decided to stay in this spot and give her another day of rest.

But, once she was up, she wouldn't hear of it. "I know what you're afraid of. You're worrying about a miscarriage. Darling, if it didn't happen yesterday, it's not going to happen. We women of the Aaron People are just as hardy as the females of any front-burrow tribe."

"There's a long journey ahead. Many, many days of travel."

"All the more reason to start immediately, dearest. We don't have food for many, many days. And we can't spare the time for a detour into Monster territory to pick up more. I'll be all right. If I find I'm giving out, I'll start drooping immediately. I promise not to push myself—I'll droop noticeably and emphatically, all over the burrows floor."

Roy, who had come up and squatted near them, said he agreed with Rachel. "It's not only going to be a long journey, Eric. It's liable to be a meandering one, full of false starts and wrong turnings and going back along the way we came. You said last night you didn't know where we are—it's going to be even harder to find out where we want to go. I say let's start now."

Knowing they were right, Eric nevertheless fought to give Rachel a little more time. First, of course, they had to have breakfast. After that, he ordered their equipment checked and inventoried, their food supply examined for possible damage from the lengthy submersion. He sent Roy off to empty their canteens and then refill them with fresh water from the pipes that always ran parallel to the sewer system. And, finally, he asked for the map that Rachel carried and insisted on examining it thoroughly for clues as to the route they might take to their agreed-upon destination—the burrows of the Aaron People.

Roy was very much excited by the map: he'd never seen one before. Having returned with the canteens, he lounged behind Eric and stared respectfully at it, trying to understand how this odd network of lines could be considered a picture of the burrows in which a man traveled with walls on either side of him and fought or avoided enemies. Eric answered his questions patiently and in great detail: every explanation, every digression, meant that much more rest for Rachel. The girl napped on the floor a little distance from them, her face still somewhat haggard and her hands clasped on a belly that was just beginning to look rounder than normal female plumpness.

But as soon as the Runner understood that the place where they were now was not to be found on the map at all, he lost interest. He moved away and began putting his equipment into expedition-readiness, tightening straps, examining his knapsack for any badly frayed area, assembling his spears in front of him and choosing the one he wanted most readily available in the back sling.

"It's like all the other stuff of the Aaron People," Eric heard him grumble. "Just like the rest of these Strangers. They have things that sound great, that are wonderful to look at—only, please, if you don't mind, we can't use it right now. It's not good in this spot, we'll use it tomorrow, we'll use it next week. Damned mouth-warriors and their phony gear.
Maps!
"

Eric was irritated and wanted to remind him of the Aaron People gear that had helped them escape from Monster territory: the waterproof cloak they had used to make bladders, the protoplasm neutralizer that was the only piece of metal among them long enough to be bent into a hook. And how long was it since Roy had been so pathetically imitating Stranger dress and Stranger habits of speech?

But the three of them would have to stay close and depend on each other in the long, difficult journey that lay ahead. A commander, Eric had noted long ago, observing his uncle, did not allow himself to get into arguments, unless they involved a direct challenge to his authority or some other form of danger to the group he led. Besides, Eric suddenly smiled to himself, Roy's griping really meant only one thing: he was back in the burrows and feeling like a warrior of Mankind again.

So did he, he realized. And it was good to be practicing your trade again. Until they reached the Aaron People, at any rate...

He jumped to his feet, then, to get away from the thought that had begun crowding in on him. "All right, everybody," he called, in the ancient band call whose last meaningless phrase was supposed to have come all the way down from the ancestors: "Let's hit the road!"

A few moments later, they were going down the tunnel in single file, Eric in the lead and Rachel in the middle. Since their experience of the day before, he found himself constantly aware of something he had taken for granted all of his life: the warmth of the burrows. It was warmth, he knew now, that the Monsters needed and created for themselves. But it was certainly very comfortable for human beings, too. Man and Monsters, he was beginning to understand, had surprisingly many similar needs.

Where was he leading this tiny band? They were completely lost, in totally unfamiliar and therefore very dangerous territory, yet Eric had an idea. He was an Eye, and an Eye should know the way anywhere he found himself—even if he'd never been there before.

At every branching burrow, he paused and took a good long look, first at the sides and in the distance for any lurking enemies, then at the floor. The floor was most important. Once in a while, he would decide a branch looked promising and turn off into it, the other two following and wondering.

The trouble was, he couldn't expect to see what he was looking for: it was more a matter of
feel
. And for this, this
feel
, his feet were more useful than his eyes. His feet had to find the way. He tried to see with his toes, to watch with his heels, to peer with his soles. He was looking for any information about the floor of the burrow that his feet could give him.

When they stopped finally for sleep and the only big meal of the day, he pulled out the map and studied it. And he was studying it again the next morning, when he awoke Roy and Rachel; he was memorizing this picture of a burrows network far distant from the one they were in. He could see that it didn't make sense to either of them.

"What are you trying to find, darling?" Rachel asked at last, when, after much cogitation, he led them up a branch burrow and, after shaking his head suddenly, turned around and led them back again to the intersection.

"I'm looking for a slope in the floor," he explained. "Any slope, no matter how slight. Your people are known among Strangers and Mankind as the furthest-back burrowers, the bottommost burrowers of all. Whenever Walter the Weapon-Seeker or Arthur the Organizer talked about the Aaron People, they told how they had gone
down
to them. Never
across
to the Aaron People, as when they visited each other's tribes; never
up
to the Aaron People, as when they traded with Mankind; but always
down
. It's the only general direction I have. To get to the bottommost burrow, I have to find and stay on a gradient."

"And if you do," she asked from behind him, falling into step once more, "what then? We may get down to the level of the Aaron People's burrows, but they might be ten or twenty days' march on either side of us. We won't even know
which
side."

"There," Eric shrugged, "I'll be counting on my luck. My luck's been good. And I'll be counting on the map. You see, at that point, the map—"

He froze, flinging up his arms for silence. Rachel and Roy stopped simultaneously in mid-step, staring over his shoulder.

There was a sentry ahead of them. The man was leaning against the burrows wall, facing in their direction, a spear trailing down from his hand to the floor. The light from his forehead glow lamp burned directly at them.

Why didn't he give the alarm? Eric and Roy both now had spears in their hands. Why didn't the sentry try to beat them to the throw?

"He's dead," Rachel breathed. "Don't you see? He's standing there, but he's dead. He's been dead for days. You can smell him."

And they could. Across the intervening space, there drifted the unmistakable odor of a corpse.

The man had died suddenly, while on duty. And he had not been sewered.

Very cautiously, one slow step at a time, they crept up to him. His eyes were open and steadfast, fixed on the tunnel he was supposed to guard, but a gray film had formed over them. His body too was gray: a gray liquid seemed to have oozed out of the pores of his skin and covered the powerful biceps, the alert face, the strong warrior's chest.

Eric looked him over, vaguely puzzled by something he could not quite place. The weapons, the equipment, the clothing—all were slightly alien, and all were, at the same time, tantalizingly familiar.

They went past the guard, walking on the balls of their feet, ready to break and run back at the slightest hint of active danger. After a while, the tunnel broadened into what Eric recognized as a central burrow, a large, high-ceilinged chamber very similar to the central meeting-place of his own people. Here, at last, they could relax and walk about easily, without fear of attack.

The central burrow was filled, from one end to the other, with nothing more hostile than corpses. Long-dead corpses.

Everywhere, men, women and children stood or sat like so many statues that had been carved to exemplify the full range of human activities. An old crone squatted at the magic of food preparation. A warrior lay on his belly watching her, a corner of his mouth twisted in anticipation. A mother had turned a small child over her knee and had her hand raised, high and angry, over his naked rump. A young man, lounging against a wall, was smiling ingratiatingly at a young girl going by, who, while totally oblivious of her admirer, apparently had no way of passing him other than cutting in close enough to brush against his folded arms.

All had succumbed to the same unexpected flash of death. All were covered with the same gray liquid from head to foot.

Seeing them here assembled, Eric understood what had been so familiar about the sentry. This was clearly a front-burrow people. The differences were minor and subtle ones, but he was standing in the midst of a tribe very much like Mankind. A little further along the wall, no doubt, but they were almost exactly as far from Monster territory as his own people. Their artifacts were as simple, their family and social life the same.

And there, sitting comfortably on a mound, surrounded by three women and benignly overseeing his tribe's activities, was an indubitable chieftain, as fat of body and as craftily stupid of expression as Franklin the Father of Many Thieves. Only the face was different.

Somewhere, nearby, there was probably a youngster who had been preparing to go on his first Theft...

Rachel turned from a body she had been scrutinizing closely. "This gray, moist skin," she announced. "I know what causes it. A homicidal spray the Monsters use. But I've only seen individuals who've been caught by that spray. Never a whole people."

"Well, the laboratory we were in, the experiments—The Monsters seem to be a lot more serious than they ever were about getting rid of us," Eric suggested.

The girl nodded grimly. "Very serious, indeed. Eric, we've got to get to my people soon. Not for our sake—for theirs. They have to know what's happened here. It's urgent."

"All right, sweetheart. I'll do my best. Is it safe to use any of the food in this place? I'd like to carry away as much as we can."

"Let me look around. Eric—don't you or Roy touch one of these bodies. That gray liquid can make you very sick. On contact."

Eric watched her opening food containers and sniffing at them gingerly. He was amazed at the strength of the feeling that billowed inside him: a tremendous warmth, a tremendous complacence.

At this moment, he felt for the first time that she was truly his wife. She had taught him a large part of what she knew. She had mated with him, and he had poured love into her body. She had conceived his child and was carrying it now inside her. But until he had stood in a great central burrow and seen her examining food to see that it was fit for him to eat—as all the wives of Mankind had done from his earliest memory—until now there had been something important that was missing. Now there was nothing missing: he knew he was married.

It was like Roy screaming when the Monster dropped them down the disposal hole that led to freedom. The scream hadn't begun then. It had been born long, long before.

A baby's first impressions are the adult's last conclusions—with an adjective or two added from a lifetime of experience.

When they left that great central burrow, the cemetery of a whole people, Roy was uncommunicative for a long time. He didn't even join the discussion by which they decided that to sewer this many human beings was utterly beyond their capacity. Eric thought he knew what was on the Runner's mind. Before they went to sleep, he told him of the similarities he had noticed between this tribe and Mankind.

"I keep thinking of Franklin and Ottilie and Rita the Record-Keeper," Eric told him. "I kept wondering if this spray had been used on them, if they were all standing around at this moment—everybody we knew—gray and wet and stiff and dead."

Roy lay back on the floor. "Mankind's dead," he muttered. "It's dead to me, anyway. I don't give a damn about Franklin and Ottilie and the rest." He turned over on his side.

But the next morning, when Eric awoke, Roy was sitting up, his hands clasped around his knees. He was staring at Rachel. There was a peculiar expression on his face which Eric found hard to analyze.

It was not at all like desire, but it had an uncomfortable intensity. Was the Runner thinking of his own mate, back in Mankind? Had he too observed Rachel selecting food—and had it reminded him of his own wifeless, completely outlaw state?