Forager Leader Thorbum stood at Stead’s side.
Thorburn had stared with genuine surprise when Stead had reported in. Stead, of course, had no memory of meeting this massive-headed, grave, intense Forager, but an immediate liking for him had warmed his greeting, firmed his handclasp. Thorburn immediately forgot his notions of proprietorship, of patronage for this man and responded with a deep and joyful acceptance of friendship.
Now Wilkins tapped the papers. “I’ve agreed to take you on, Stead, through friendship for Simon—uh, Controller Bonaventura—but I warn you that if you do not act within the framework of a Forager’s duties, I shall have no hesitation in discharging you.”
Wryly, Stead heard the change in the man’s voice. He didn’t know Controller Wilkins’ off-watch name; he wondered what the man would say if, knowing it, he had used it in his own Controller’s accents before his future foraging mates. This world had many barriers he must learn to hurdle in his own way.
“You have been trained, but that means you are just beginning to learn how much you have to leam. Forager Leader Thorburn will show you. He may not welcome this assignment, but business is pressing lately; I’ve lost a number of good Hunters, and I have no time to mollycoddle you, Stead.” Wilkins looked down again at the papers.
“You have been issued a cape and it has been trained to your bloodstream. Uniform, weapons, respirator, antigrav, sack—yes… I think that’s all. The Regulations have been fully explained to you. Understand me. You go Outside for one purpose and one purpose only. To bring back to Archon the fruits of the world so that the people may live. That is all. Everything else is subordinate to that.”
But, being a Controller, Wilkins had the grace to add, “I do not forget that Thorburn, in bending that law, assured you of life, Stead. That is between the two of you. But Thorbum has been warned. Full sacks, Stead, full sacks!”
When they were outside Wilkin’s control cubicle, Thorbum said, “Phew! Let’s go and meet the gang.”
Down in the Controller’s section of the warren, Stead would have prefaced his remark with a blistering, “By all the Demons of Outside!” and gone on to express himself.
But among the Foragers and Hunters he had learned after using the expression just once, that they were not curse words. It wasn’t even a blasphemy. It was so much a part of everyday life that it had no significance, or so much deep meaning that it became inexpressible.
Copying the insolent swagger of Foragers when inside in the company of soldiers, Stead did as Thorbum did and flicked his cape grandly behind him. The cape might have been fully trained to his blood stream—getting used to the twin filaments running into the back of his neck had been irksome and, at first, revolting—but the thing’s own life was still frolicsome and it had developed a cunning little habit of drooping down and then licking gently between his legs. Four times, now, he’d been ignominiously tripped on his nose. And how his comrades at the training warren had laughed!
“You’ll soon master your cape, Stead,” Thorbum told him. “It’s a youngster. And a cape with ideas of its own is a better bet than an old worn out rag. Changes quicker. Old Chronic knows that. He’s been through a dozen capes in his time.”
^’OldChronicP”
“You’ll meet ’em all. The gang. The Foraging party I am privileged to lead into the Outside. I wouldn’t change it. It’s far better than being cooped up as a worker.”
Thorburn had changed since the forage when he had found this man who now walked along so lithely at his side, topping him by four inches or more. The changes had been within his mind and he had welcomed them. The sureness had come of itself. He no longer gave unnecessary orders on a forage; the party knew what to do and they did it. Thorbum briefed them with any new or particular instructions before they left.
Down in the Hunters’ rest rooms in the warren just inside the barrier and the blue light, a room tucked neatly into a crevice between a water pipe and an electric light conduit, Stead met them all.
Julia, big and blonde, with a flashing smile and a warmth for the new man she spilled out for everyone, proud of her prowess as a radarop, sleek limbed and gay.
Sims and Wallas, brothers in all but parentage, young, tough, doltish looking but with brains that held absolute competence in their alloted tasks.
Cardon, black browed, fierce-eyed, bitter, unrelenting, sudden, a man with a sin troubling his conscience.
Old Chronic—well, Old Chronic clicked his dentures and grinned and snorted and spluttered and demanded a whole book to himself.
And lastly, Honey. Honey of the soft, silky jet hair, the soft eyes of innocence, the soft rosebud mouth and the blooming skin of satin. Honey of the slender figure and shy smile, with a reserve of cold courage that Thorburn had seen grow and strengthen in a hundred perilous moments since that time she had cowered frightened by the window as she saw her first Demon. Honey, with the gentleness of girlhood, and a softness that concealed a core of steel.
“And this is Stead,” said Thorbum.
What were they making of him? Each in his or her own way greeted the new man. Stead knew that he unbalanced the party, that he was an added and extra risk, that through his presence all their lives might be forfeit. But he smiled and shook hands and tried to hold himself erect without arrogance. In these people’s hands reposed his own life.
“One to come, Thorbum,” said the Forager Manager, old bald and short-sighted Purvis. Once he’d tangled with a Rang single-handed and brought the carcass in, not to prove his deed but because a good Forager always came home with a full sack. “Feller called Vance. Comes from a firm of Foragers right on the other side of the warrens.”
“Yes,” said Thorbum. “As soon as he gets here we’ll step out.”
But the gang were arguing and protesting.
“No foraging party takes out more than one new man!” exploded Cardon, savage and black of brow. “What’s H. Q. playing at?”
Over the babble of protests, Manager Purvis cut them short. “If you want to argue with head office go and see Wilkins. When you’re out of a job you can starve. You know the Regulations. No job, no food. And don’t give me the old Forager tale of finding enough food Outside to be independent of the warrens. You wouldn’t last a sixth of a quarter.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Cardon darkly.
They were all held in the ritual tension of a pre-forage waiting: the old jokes were unwrapped and cracked and laughed at and put, dustily, away; the building-up meal was eaten with a relish or lack of appetite peculiar to the individual temperament; weapons were checked for the feel of something to occupy the hands; last minute reports from other foraging parties were collated into their own lead-out route.
Signals orderlies passed the blue slips through pneumatic tubes into the Hunter-waiting cubby; Old Chronic irritably read them and clicked his teeth and with his neat precise hand inked in the symbols on his map, always with a complaint. But he was a good Navigator, old as he was, or perhaps because he was old.
“I’d trust Old Chronic to find us a route through a Demon’s temple with everything in full swing,” Thorburn told Stead with an exasperated look at the old navigator. “He only just failed the finals for his geographer’s assistantship. He could never, coming from the Foraging class, be an Architectural Geographer. But we hear how often the assistants do the job while the lordly Controllers slope off.”
“I’ve never met an Architectural Geographer,” Stead said, but his interest concentrated on another thing that Thorbum had said. “You mentioned a Demon’s temple. You mean to tell me you really believe in Demons? I know Hunters and Foragers talk about them, but I’m going outside now. Isn’t it time to admit the truth?”