And why was there no sound of him anywhere, no sign in all this infinity of gloomy, stretching, menace-filled tunnels?
Fortunately, he was an Eye. He knew the way back and sped desperately along it without the slightest feeling of doubt. The Record Machine was right: he would never be lost. Let him just get safely back to the companionship of Mankind and he would be Eric the Eye.
And there it was again: who had been right, the Record Machine or his uncle? The vision that named him had come from the Record Machine, but his uncle claimed that this was pure political manipulation. The vision had been selected and his name proposed to the women well in advance of the ceremony. And his uncle was an Alien; Sciencer, plotting with Strangers to erect an altar to the new religion in Mankind’s burrows, plotting to overthrow the holy prerogatives of Ottilie the Omen-Teller…
So many things had happened in the last two days, Eric felt. So much of his world had shifted. It was as if the walls of the burrows had moved outward and upward until they resembled Monster territory more than human areas.
He was getting close now. These condors looked friend-her, more familiar. He made himself run faster, although he was almost at the point of exhaustion. He wanted to be home, to be officially Eric the Eye, to inform Mankind of what had happened so that a rescue and searching party could be sent out for his uncle.
That doorway to Monster territory: who had replaced it? If a battle had been fought, and his uncle’s band had retreated, still fighting, would the attacker have stopped to put the door neatly back in its socket? No.
Could it be explained by a sudden onslaught and the complete extermination of his uncle’s band? Then, before dragging the bodies away, the enemy would have had time to put the door back. A doorway into Monster territory was a valuable human resource, after all, valuable to Mankind and Strangers alike—why jeopardize it by leaving it visible and open?
But who—or what—could have been capable of such a sudden onslaught, such a complete extermination of the best-led band in all Mankind? He’d have to get the answer from one of the other band captains or possibly a wise old crone in the Female Society.
Definitely within the boundaries of Mankind now, Eric forced himself to slow to a walk. He would be coming upon a sentry at any moment, and he had no desire at all to have a spear flung through him. A sentry would react violently to a man dashing out of the darkness.
“Eric the Only,” he called out, identifying himself with each step. “This is Eric the Only.” Then he remembered his Theft proudly and changed the identification. “Eric the Eye. This is Eric the Eye, the Espier, the further-seeing, less-paying Eye. Eric the Eye coming.”
Oddly, there was no returning call of recognition. Eric didn’t understand that. Had Mankind itself been attacked and driven away from its burrow? A sentry should respond to a familiar name. Something was very, inexplicably wrong.
Then he came around the last curve and saw the sentry at the other end. Rather, he saw what at first looked like three sentries. They were staring at him, and he recognized them. Stephen the Strong-Armed and two members of Stephen’s band. Evidently he had arrived just at the moment when the sentry on duty was about to be relieved. That would account for Stephen and the other man. But why hadn’t they replied to his shouts of identification?
They stood there silently as he came up, their spears still at the ready, not going down in welcome. “Eric the Eye,” he repeated, puzzled. “I’ve made my Theft, but something happened to the—”
His voice trailed off, as Stephen came up to him, his face grim, his powerful muscles taut. The band captain shoved a spear point hard against Eric’s chest. “Don’t move,” he warned. “Barney. John. Tie him up.”
7
His spears taken from him, his arms bound securely behind his back by the thongs of his own knapsack, Eric was pushed and prodded into the great central burrow of Mankind.
The place was almost unrecognizable.
Under the direction of Ottilie, the Chieftain’s First Wife, a horde of women—what seemed at first like the entire membership of the Female Society—was setting up a plat-. form in front of the Royal Mound. With the great scarcity of any building materials that Mankind suffered from, a construction of this sort was startling and unusual, yet there was something about it that awoke highly unpleasant memories in Eric’s mind. But he was pulled from place to place too fast and there were too many other unprecedented things going on for him to be able to identify the memory properly.
Two women who were accredited members of the Female Society were not working under Ottilie’s direction, he noticed. Bound hand and foot, they were lying against the far wall of the great central burrow. They were both covered with blood and showed every sign of having undergone prolonged and most vicious torture. He judged them to be barely this side of death.
As he was jerked past, he recognized them.,They were the two wives of Thomas the Trap-Smasher.
Just wait until his uncle got back: someone would really pay for this, he thought, more in absolute amazement than horror. He had the feeling that he must keep the horror away at all costs—-once let it in and it would soak through his thoughts right into the memory he was trying to avoid.
The place was full of armed men, running back and forth from their band captains to unknown destinations in the outlying corridors. Between them and around them, scuttled the children, fetching and carrying raw materials for the hard-working women. There was a steady buzz of commands in the air—“Go to—,” “Bring some more—,” “Hurry with the—,”—that mingled with the smell of many people whose pores were sweating urgency. And it wasn’t just sweat that he smelled, Eric realized as he was dragged before the Royal Mound: it was anger, the anger and fear of all Mankind.
Franklin the Father of Many Thieves stood on the mound, carrying unaccustomed spears in his fat hands, talking rapidly to a group of warriors, band captains and—yes, actually!—Strangers. Even now, Eric found he could still be astonished.
Strangers in the very midst of Mankind! Walking around freely and bearing arms!
As the chief caught sight of Eric, his face broke into a loose-skinned smile. He nudged a Stranger beside him and pointed at the prisoner.
“That’s him,” he said. “That’s the nephew. The one that asked for the thus category Theft. Now we’ve got them all.”
The Stranger didn’t smile. He looked briefly at Eric and turned away. “I’m glad you think so. From our point of view, you’ve just got one more.”
Franklin’s smile faded to an uncertain grin. “Well, you know what I mean. And the damned fool came back by himself. It saved us a lot of trouble, I mean, didn’t it?” Receiving no answer, he shrugged. He gestured with flabby imperiousness at Eric’s guards. “You know where to put him. We’ll be ready for them pretty soon.”
Again the point of a spear stabbed into Eric’s back, and he was forced forward across the central space to a small burrow entrance. Before he could reach it, however, he heard Franklin the Father of Many Thieves call out to Mankind: “There goes Eric, my people. Eric the Only. Now we’ve got them all.”
For a moment, the activity stopped and seemed to focus on him. Eric shivered as a low, drawn-out grunt of viciousness and hatred arose everywhere, but most of all from the women.
Someone ran up to him. Harriet the History-Teller. The girl’s face was absolutely contorted. She reached up to the crown of her head and pulled out the long pin held in place by a few knotted scarlet hairs. About her face and neck the hair danced like flames.