Instead of which …
He found that he was able to stare at the Monster room now from under the cover of his hiding place with only a slight feeling of nausea. Well, that in itself was an achievement. After such a relatively short time, here he was, able to look around and estimate the nature of Monster goods like the most experienced warrior. He couldn’t look up too high as yet, but what warrior could?
Well and good, but this wasn’t getting him anywhere. He didn’t have a normal Theft to make. His was third category. Monster souvenirs.
Eric turned and faced the darkness again. He walked rapidly forward into the straight-walled burrow, the glow lamp on his forehead lighting a yellow path. Ahead of him, the great black space grew steadily larger as he pushed toward it.
Everything about his Theft, his initiation into manhood, was extraordinary. Thomas the Trap-Smasher telling the women about his special talents, so that he would be accorded a vision and a name which would fit with them. Visions were supposed to come from the ancestors, through the Ancestor-Science of the Record Machine. Nobody was supposed to have the slightest idea in advance of what the vision would be. That was all up to the ancestors and their mysterious plans for the descendants.
Was it possible, was it conceivable, that all visions and names were prearranged, that the Record Machine was set in advance for every initiation? Where did that leave religion? If that were so, how could you continue to believe in logic, in cause and effect?
And having someone—a Stranger, at that!—help you make your Theft. A Theft was supposed to be purely and simply a test of your male potential; by definition, it was something you did alone.
But if you could accept the concept of prearranged visions, why not prearranged Thefts?
Eric shook his head. He was getting into very dark corridors mentally: his world was turning into sheer confusion.
But one thing he knew. Making an arrangement with a Stranger, as his uncle had done, was definitely an act contrary to all the laws and practices of Mankind. Thomas’ uncertain speech had underlined that fact. It was wrong.
Yet his uncle was the greatest man in all Mankind, so far as Eric was concerned. Thomas the Trap-Smasher could do no wrong. But Thomas the Trap-Smasher was evidently leaning toward Alien-Science. Alien-Science was wrong. But again, on the other hand, his own parents, according to the Trap-Smasher, his father and his mother had been Alien-Sciencers.
Too much. There was just too much to work out. There was too much he didn’t know. He’d better concentrate on his Theft.
The strange burrow had come to an end. The hairs rose on the back of his neck as he walked into the great dark area and sensed enormous black heights above him. He began to hurry, turning every once in a while to make certain that he was staying in a straight line with the light from the entrance. Here, his forehead glow lamp was almost no use at all. He didn’t like this place. It felt almost like being out in the open.
What, he wondered again feverishly, was this structure in the world of the Monsters? What function did it have? He was not sure he wanted to know.
Eric was running by the time he came to the end of the open space. He hit the wall so hard that he was knocked over backward.
For a moment, he was badly frightened, then he realized what had happened. He hadn’t taken his bearings for a while: he must have moved off at an angle.
Groping along the wall with extended arms, he found the entrance to the low burrow at last. It was quite low—he had to bend his knees and duck his head as he went up it. And it was an unpleasantly narrow little corridor. But then there was an opening on his right—the fork his uncle had told him about—and he turned into it with relief.
He had arrived.
There was a burst of light from a group of glow lamps. And there were Strangers, there were several Strangers here. Three of them—no, four—no, five! They squatted in a corner of this large, square burrow, three of them talk-ing earnestly, the other two engaged in some incomprehensible task with materials that were mostly unfamiliar.
All of them leaped to their feet as he trotted in and deployed instantly in a wide semicircle facing him. Eric wished desperately he had been holding two heavy spears instead of the single light one. With two heavy spears you had both a shield and a dangerous offensive weapon. A light spear was good for a single cast, and that was that.
He held it nevertheless in the throwing position above his shoulder and glared fiercely, as a warrior of Mankind should. If he had to throw, he decided, he would spring to one side immediately afterward and try to pluck the two heavy spears from his back-sling. But if they rushed him right now.
The tension was broken by a strong-faced, middle-aged man who stepped forward, spear throbbing in an upraised arm, and said cautiously, almost inquiringly: “Safety first?”
Eric began to relax. This was the ancient greeting of peace when warrior met warrior in the dangerous precincts of Monster territory. You said “Safety first!” as recognition of the fact that there were much more fearful creatures than humans about—and as a mutual reminder of what should be uppermost in everyone’s mind while they were in this terrible place.
He gave the traditional reply. “Safety above all!” he intoned, announcing his own willingness to observe the truce of Monster territory, to sink any individual belligerence into common alertness and back-to-back protection against the perils that surrounded them.
There was a nod of acceptance from the middle-aged man. “Who are you?” the man said. “What’s your name—what’s your people?”
“Eric the Only.” Then he remembered to add: “I’m destined to be Eric the Eye. My people are Mankind.”
“He’s expected, one of us,” the man told the others who immediately relaxed, slung their spears and went back to what they had been doing. “Welcome, Eric the Only of Mankind. Put up your spear and sit with us. I am Arthur the Organizer.”
Eric gingerly dropped his spear into the back-sling. He studied the Stranger.
A man about as old as his uncle and not nearly as hefty, although well-muscled enough for normal warlike purposes. He wore the loin-straps of a full warrior, but—as if these were not enough honor for a man—he also wore straps laced about his chest and across his shoulders, though he was carrying no knapsack. This was the fashion of many Strangers, Eric knew, as was the strap at the back of the head that held the hair in a tight tail away from the eyes instead of letting it hang wild and free as the hair of a warrior should. And the straps were decorated with odd, incised designs—another weak and unmanlike Stranger fashion.
Who but Strangers, Eric thought contemptuously, would group up so in an alien place without setting sentries at either end of their burrow? Truly Mankind had good reason to despise them!
But this man was a leader, he realized, a born leader, with an even more self-assured air than Thomas the Trap-Smasher, captain of the best band in all Mankind. He was studying Eric in turn, with eyes that weighed carefully and then, having decided on the measure, made a definite placement, fitting Eric permanently into this plan or that plan. He looked like a man whose head was full of many plans, each one evolving inexorably through action to a predetermined end.
He took Eric’s arm companionably and led him to where the others squatted and talked and worked. This was no tribal burrow of any sort: it was quite apparently a temple-in-exile, the field headquarters of a new faith. The men who sat working on the floor would one day be priests of that faith among their various peoples. And Arthur the Organizer would be Supreme Pontiff.