“And what is the truth?”
“Well, people are confused about the reasons for the Demoniac stories, but the best scientific theories now are that they were planted in men’s minds to check our natural sinfulness, to act as consciences.”
“By a Scunner’s diseased intestines!” exploded Cardon. “What rubbish they’ve been filling you with, Stead.”
Stead felt anger, anger and shame. “I only know what I’ve been told.”
“Wait until we’re outside. Then you can talk.”
Stead decided to take that advice; he shut up.
Honey picked up her wavelength log, and grimaced. “Enough changes to work my fingers sore. It’s this blasted static howling across the air that’s doing it.”
“You’ve got troubles,” Julia said, polishing her set with an entirely feminine duster. “This confounded howling is beginning to creep onto my radar frequencies. If it fouls those up—”
“We cut a beam,” Thorburn said tartly. “We cut a beam. If any of you Hunters in my party can’t scuttle fast enough to elude a Demon, you don’t belong with me.”
Everyone, as though their heads were on strings, swung to stare at Stead. He swallowed. Truly, this was an entirely new world he’d been dumped into, a world where values had been turned topsy-turvy and life, real and hot, meant more than ever it could in the rarefied levels of the Controllers’ warrens.
Purvis called into the waiting cubby. “Here’s your new man Vance, Thorbum.”
Again as though invisible strings drew them, everyone’s head swiveled to the door. This time Stead looked too.
Vance strode in, glanced keenly about, approached Thorburn with a Forager’s swagger. He glanced coldly at Stead. “Thorburn? I’m Vance. And this must be Stead.”
The new man reeked of toughness. His short, stocky body bulged his dull green Hunter’s uniform; his cape, a middleaged specimen in mature condition, clung to him with all sixteen legs in a synthesis that told of long and perfect association. His square, craggy face, dour and without humor, seemed rather to glower out on life. Beneath tufted eyebrows his eyes lurked in shadow, pitiless and unfathomable.
Stead felt an unaccountable shiver at sight of the man.
“Welcome, Vance,” said Thorburn, holding out his hand. The handshake was brief, perfunctory. Thorburn introduced the others. Even Stead, after so short an acquaintance, appreciated the strange reluctance of the exuberant Julia’s greeting. This man knew his job, but he had time for no one but himself.
When he shook hands with Stead, Stead said deliberately, “You won’t be a handicap to the party, Vance, unlike me.”
Vance did not laugh; but his thin lips moved with the ghost of what might have been a sardonic smile. “That’s why I’m here, Stead. Don’t get out of my sight.”
And the understanding that hit Stead then reduced his own stature, humbled him. This man Vance was going along as a nursemaid!
“If you’re all set?” Thorburn, without waiting for an answer picked up his gun, slung it, caught up his sacks and strode for the door. Everyone else followed his example.
Stead looked at the gun issued to him. It was not new but was less action-worn than those he had trained with. Everyone called it a splutter-gun. It fired a smallish projectile, the bullets arranged in the clip in alternate explosive and solid coned rounds. A two-handed weapon, it could be operated with one hand by any trained fighter. He hefted it, flung it. He wondered, not without a twinge of apprehension, if he would have to use it.
Honey strapped on her walkie-talkie, Julia her radar set. They slung their sacks. Old Chronic finished sharpening a pencil and slung his logs and maps. With Thorburn in the lead they stepped out of the Hunters’ waiting cubby, boarded their electric car. The soldier raised the barrier, his helmet shining under the blue light, and saluted.
The car purred away down a long echoing corridor. Stead was on his way Outside.
Chapter Seven
The electric car moved smoothly, running on eight small rubber-tired wheels, its truck body swaying gently. The Foragers sat around the truck on bench seats, their equipment, strapped to them, part of their beings now. Following the car, another truck filled with Forager Engineers kept pace with them. Overhead lights flashed past, to dwindle and die. The driver switched on his headlights.
“What’s the drill, then, leader?” asked Vance formally.
“We’re going through a new hole. Beams have been appearing regularly across our major exits.”
“Yes. It’s been getting tough over on the other side.”
“Foraging is getting more difficult every day,” growled Cardon, his dark face savage. “Wilkins doesn’t seem to understand, but then, he’s only a Controller. The last time he went Outside must have been twenty years ago.”
Stead sat silent, listening avidly, conscious of the strangeness of this conversation. These people didn’t seem to appreciate the position of Controllers, didn’t seem to understand how fortunate the Empire of Archon was in its ruling class.
But he did not say anything.
Thorburn pulled out his leader’s map, angled it so they all could see. “I’m changing the route on my own initiative. Didn’t want old Purvis to know; he’s a good man but—”
The others nodded understandingly.
“Last trip we opened up a new route straight into a fresh food store. Relatively simple to fill our sacks and lug them back. However, although I want to get back into that store again and that’s the way we were routed, I figure that the route will be beamed. There were traps there, all over.”
“Traps,” said Vance contemptuously.
“One of ’em had caught a Scunner,” said Cardon, and Vance raised one bushy eyebrow. “Nasty, then,” he said in a low voice.
The corridor debouched into an uneven, narrow space with raw earth on one side and a flowing wall of concrete on the other. The truck’s headlights speared into the darkness ahead. The sound of running water kept pace with their progress; the air smelt damp.
When, at last, the truck slowed and stopped, they had covered at least five miles. The driver looked up.
“End of the ride. All out.”
The engineers’ truck pulled up behind. The engineers, Foragers with specialized aptitudes, pulled their equipment out, strapped down to antigrav sleds. They yoked themselves up and began hauling the sleds up a rubble-strewn ascending passage that curved and jinked and gave them some trouble.
The driver and his four guards, Foragers detailed for soldier duties, conversed with the second driver and guards. Then the driver turned to Thorburn. “Blane took his group out this way yesterday.”
“Yes. I don’t expect we’ll meet him, though.” Thorbum was checking the engineers’ progress. “He was routed to return through that hole over on the cable way.”
“I was going to say he dropped a hint he might come out this way. If you see him, pass the word we’ll wait for him, too. His own transport can be picked up later.”
“Right.” Thorbum looked over his group. “Come on.”
These men, decided Stead, following obediently, seemed to take a lot for granted. And they made up their own minds, overriding the definite orders of their superiors.
That puzzled him, knowing what he did of the hierarchy of Archon.
Up ahead the lights from the engineers bobbed and winked. In the illumination of every other man’s headlamp, Thorburn’s party began the ascent.
The world for Stead had always consisted of narrow passages and slots, and cubicles cut from earth or concrete or brick, except for that one frightening experience when he had gone down to the Captain’s Quarters. As the party toiled on along slits between earth and rock, negotiating thick cables and wires, brushing through falls of dirt and leaping splits in the ground, he found the surroundings familiar if more cramped. These alleyways through the foundations of the world of buildings were little different from those immediately surrounding the warrens. He began to breath with an easier rhythm.