These scientists of Archon—these earliest friends—must know what they were doing. Surely?
He felt a blazing impulse to rush out into the runnel, seize the first girl he happened across, bundle her into this dark cranny and there rip off all her clothes and so discover what mystery lay in a woman’s body that all the pictures and all the evasive answers could never give.
How could it be so important? The important things in life were eating and sleeping, drinking and having fun. The important things were going out into the Outside and proudly returning with full sacks. The really important aims of life were the learning of all that science could teach, the probing of the barriers of the unknown. But— But that brought him squarely back to where he had started.
Stead staggered out into the runnel, avoided a miraculously appearing dancing line, lurched away to find his comrades.
It was all too much for him. He would have to go along with Simon and Delia and wait patiently until they explained everything. Anything else, now, was far too difficult.
And as he went he hugged the knowledge of the Demons to himself. That, at any rate, was one area of knowledge where he was superior to them.
Not that it was doing him much good.
Finding his way back to streets and runnels he recognized took time. He passed endless rows of workers’ hovels where the pitiful evidences of their jubilation in bacchanalia, a tawdry reflection of the more robust Forager celebrations, might have filled him with sorrow and a pondering wonder had his mind not been seething with his own problems. These people had little to celebrate. Their lives grayed with daily toil, the fear of sickness, the never-ending search for that extra crust of bread, that extra blanket, that extra heating element.
No wonder, then, at bacchanalia they let their repressions pop.
At least the Foragers and Hunters met the danger and excitement of their lives with a consciousness that they were alive. The workers might as well be dead, most of the time, for all the difference it made to them.
The wine fumes coiled less chokingly about him now and his steps grew steadier. By the time he caught a glimpse of Cardon’s black-browed face, with Sims and Wallas with arms draped across each other’s shoulders, Stead was back to his usual self, or, rather, the self he had become out here with the Foragers. He hailed his comrades through the noise.
They were genuinely glad to see him.
“Hey, Thorbum! Here’s Stead!” and, “Hullo, Stead. Vance has been worried.” Cardon just eyed him and took a long throat-jerking swig at his goblet.
They were standing pushed back against the comer of a pastryshop where already the shelves had been covered by sheets of white paper, eloquent proof of their sold and eaten wares’ popularity. In this little eddy in the human stream Stead paused, regaining his breath, looking about for Honey and the others. He turned back, dodging a man wearing a papier mache mask six feet tall, leering and grinning and blowing an immense trumpet, and saw Cardon striding off, pushing his way through with the purpose of a man who would not be denied passage.
Chuckling at Cardon’s black-browed intentness, his brooding seriousness even in the midst of Bacchanalia, Stead followed.
What was it that Thorbum had said, off-handedly, without really thinking what he was saying? “Cardon is a man cherishing a secret sin.” Sins were acts and thoughts against the sublimity of the immortal being. That was what he’d learned with the Controllers, but among the Foragers, as Astroman Nav had direfully predicted, spiritual matters and the deeper genuflections to the immortal one were mere surface posturings, habits without conviction. That had shocked him. But he’d wit enough to see that Cardon wouldn’t cherish a secret sin against the immortal being. At least, Stead, with his new-found knowledge of his latter-day comrades, didn’t think so.
Sims and Wallas had vanished and Stead, pushing along in a roseate cloud of wine fumes and heady thoughts and the blackness of the deeper frustrations within him, supposed that Cardon was trying to catch up with the rest of the group.
Only when Cardon turned off quickly into a narrow crevice under the curving flight of stairs leading up to another level and, with a searching backward glance into the throng that missed Stead, was a hazy idea of another destination borne in on Stead. What was Cardon up to? The man slithered swiftly down a ramp of beaten earth; his cape swirled around the lightless corner and the way lay open and empty. Still with a betraying tremble in his legs, Stead started on down.
A hoarse shout, a blow, stunningly heavy across his neck, and then the greasy taste of earth in his mouth. A man’s foot, thick and clumsy in ill-fitting sandal, an inch from his face. The pressing feel of hands lifting, turning, bringing his face up into the light of an electric torch. The blinding brilliance of that light struck through in red whorls of agony past his closed eyelids.
“Who is he?”
“A dirty Controller spy. Dispose of him—quick!” A rough horny hand under his chin, jerking his head up cruelly. Sparks darting before his closed eyes. “Wait!”
The voice… the voice had to be Cardon’s. “I know him. The stranger. He knows nothing.” Another voice, thick and syrupy and laden with hate. “You’re right. He will know nothing when I’ve finished with him.”
“No, you fool! He has powerful connections.” Two soft yet firm pressures beside his eyes. “A thumb in his eye will stop him spying.”
“Don’t do it! You’ll precipitate—”
Stead heaved mightily, once. Then he was flat again on his back and a man’s foot pressed down without mercy on his chest.
“The people will not tolerate Controller spies!”
“He isn’t—at least, I don’t think so. But he’s followed everywhere by Controller watchdogs.”
“Them! Men who betray their own class.”
The slither of metal on stone. Something hard jabbed excruciatingly into his side. He tried to move, to roll over, to curl away from that relentless light. A voice called, faintly, some distance away.
“More! Two of ’em!”
“They’ll be his watchdogs; come on, man! Run!”
“I’m not leaving him.”
The sound of a scuffle, hard breathing, a curse, the slide and slither of feet on stone. Then, “All right, Cardon, but you’ll be sorry for this!”
The diminishing patter of feet. The darkness swamped back, blessed, cool, concealing darkness.
When his two watchdogs reached him, Stead was just staggering up, a hand to his head, swaying, staring blearily about. He wanted to be sick.
They didn’t speak to him. They waited, hovering, their hands under their black short-capes resting on gunbutts, watching. They hovered and waited and watched as Stead lurched unsteadily back into the lighted runnels and, filled with a horror he could not put name to, found his miserable way back to his group.
Truly, there was much to learn in this wicked world.
Chapter Eleven
The day after the Forager’s Bacchanalia Manager Purvis called Thorburn, Blane and Rogers into his office. The three leaders left their groups speculating on what lay in store for them. Other group leaders had already been briefed; more would be given their instructions later in the day.
“It’s another big one, you see,” said Julia confidently.
Old Chronic cackled wheezingly. “Must take all we can mine afore the Demons step on us, eh, Stead?”
The oldster shot a malevolently arch look at Stead.
He’d sighted his first Demon on his last Forage and he’d had to stand drinks all around his group, but they still liked to dig slyly at him. That was one of the tricks of the trade, a morale booster, one of the hazards of life that set these men and women apart from their warren-dwelling fellows.