Thorburn was up on one knee, now, shooting with calm precision, hurling the last remnants of fleeing enemy soldiers back. Stead looked beyond him. Honey rose, her black hair shining almost green in the lurid lights, shooting with methodical directness. Julia crawled up, clasping a riddled leg, swearing vitriolically. Wallas was binding “up Sims’ wound.
And Old Chronic, cackling, was already slithering out, creeping like some underworld animal, across the churned up ground, out to strip the dead.
“Julia!” Thorburn leaped all asprawl to her, dropped to a knee, caught her to him. “Are you all right?”
“By a Scunner’s diseased left kidney!” Julia said, juicily. “Those Rang-bait, illegitimate, thrice-damned, eternally lost goons of Trychos put a bullet through my shapely leg!” She dragged her dull green Hunter’s slacks up around the shattered armor greave. Blood glistened Oilily. “If it leaves a scar I’ll… I’ll—”
“You’re all right, Julia,” said Thorbum, fervently. “Thank the immortal being!”
Stead laughed, nervously. His head ached. He had come through a traumatic experience; but there was no time to indulge in fancy psychological exhibitions; if he was to save himself he had to go on along the path he had chosen.
He stilled that silly, nervous, betraying laugh. He walked across in the lights being switched on as the men of Archon began to create order out of the aftermath of battle. Old Purvis was shouting his head off. Cardon, Honey, Vance, all the others of the group except Old Chronic, gathered around Thorbum and Julia. Near them Rogers and his group gathered in the smoky light. The soldiers were out searching for the men shouting out there, the wounded, only now able to call for help.
“Fighting other men,” Stead said bitterly. “Julia, Sims, wounded by men!” His face, smoke-blackened, gaunt, with deeply-sunk eyes rimmed in black, bloodshot, glared around on them. “You’re going to listen to me!”
Surprised, they watched him. Vance put up a hand. “You’re a criminal, Stead.”
“Only in the light of Regulations framed to prevent us from taking what is ours by right! I’m no criminal to any thinking Forager! And you all know it!”
Cardon pushed forward. His fiercely eager face, as vicious as a Rang’s, thrust out. “If you’re saying what we think, Stead—”
“I’m saying that it is time the Foragers told the world the truth! It is time we liberated mankind from the slavery, the thraldom, the parasiticism, that the Controllers have permitted for too long!”
And then, incredibly, Cardon was talking. His lean ferocious face glowed with an animation Stead had never seen it possess before. He spoke with vituperation of the Controllers. His words poured out, pure demogoguery, impelling, compelling, charging words with a new meaning, old-established facts with new, sharper life.
“Our brothers are spread wide!” he cried. “Through every firm of Foragers, in the ranks of the soldiers, of the workers— the brothers of the revolution merely await the call]” He pointed dramatically at Stead. “Look at him. He’s a new man, but he has become a comrade. He has been thrust down to toil with us in the Outside. He has broken a Regulation, well he may. And he will be condemned to a hideous death because he sought to save his life from a peril the Controllers never face, that they cannot believe to exist!”
Others had drifted up now, Rogers’ group, soldiers cleaning their weapons. .They clustered in the fitful light, a ring of tense faces, softly breathing, waiting for the spark that would set them alight.
“The Day has come, my brothers!” shouted Cardon. “Stead shot at a Demon. And how many others have done the same?” He stared around on them, dramatically pausing. Then, “Vance has, I’ll wager. And Manager Purvis. A lot of us. I have!”
No sound whispered from the packed ranks.
“The day has come when the masses shall arise in their wrath and their power! The day of the Controllers has ended! We—the Foragers, the soldiers, the workers—must take over the control! We must exercise the power we possess but are too disunited to use.” His voice sank. “Brothers, in our hands, lies the opportunity to arrange the world in a saner, more ordered, fairer fashion.” His voice soared, keening now with the thrusting, dark ambition of the man. “We must not hesitate! We must go on, march shoulder to shoulder against the tyranny of the Controllers, smash oppression, bring new hope and decent life to all men. To you and to me!”
They cheered then. Helmets rose into the air. Swords flashed. These men of the underworld, these men doomed to spend their lives in unending toil, fighting the horrible denizens of a hostile world unknown to the lordly Controllers— they cheered, these men, cheering themselves and their hopes, famishing for a chance to lead a better life.
But Stead stared on, appalled.
Was this what he had planned? This revolution?
“No,” said Stead, weakly through the noise. “No.”
Thorburn stared at him, licking his lips, uncertain.
“So that explains Cardon,” the Forager Leader said, softly. “That sin he always carried with him. He, too, shot at a Demon.”
“And it didn’t bring the results you predicted for Stead,” flashed Julia, finishing the bandages with her own fingers. “Cardon speaks good sense!”
“But… but can we do it?” whispered Thorburn.
“We’ll do it.” Julia stood up, grasping Thorburn, reaching out a hand to Stead. “We’ll make a better world for our kids, Thorburn! That’s what matters to me!”
After that the return to the temporary depot became an inferno of muddled noise and light, shouting and cheering, and an occasional shot. The temporary depot joined up to a man. The brothers of Cardon’s conspiracy had infiltrated everywhere; the acceptance of their lot that had so impressed and perplexed Stead lay revealed now as the quiescent, patient waiting of a volcano. Controller Forager Wilkins disappeared from the scene. Stead did not, then, have the courage to make too pertinent inquiries. Tiredness lapped over him, tiredness and a weary disillusion.
He was borne along on the heady wave of enthusiasm, dragged along with the masses, and thankful, inexpressibly thankful that he would not have to face a charge of shooting at a Demon.
But Demons really existed. He did not forget his vow to do all he could to take men out of their warrens and their runnels behind walls, bring them into the real world of the Outside that was rightfully theirs.
Countless meetings were held. Committees were elected. Thorburn and his entire group, with the significant exception of Old Chronic, were elected onto an action committee. Delegates went out to neighboring Forager H.Q. Soldiers drifted in, deserters welcomed with open arms and good food and wine.
For this area on the periphery of the warrens, Cardon, to his own surprise and then gratification, was elected Delegate Member Controller. He was not an ambitious man for himself. Cardon really believed in the message he preached.
And his prophet, to the absolute bewilderment of Stead, was B. G. Wills.
From that erudite and clear-thinking man, Cardon and his associates had gleaned a distorted view of the world and their part in it, and they had set about rectifying the faults. Through all their declamations, their points programs, a queer far-off echo of Wills rumbled down in muted logic but violent fury.
In all honesty, having seen what he had, Stead could not gainsay the right of these downtrodden people to a fair share in the good things of the world.
But he had wanted them to go out into the Outside, and take those goodnesses from the Demons, from the alien monstrosities who dominated the real world and under whose feet mankind was a mere irritating pest.