Mutters, mumbles and moans. The man seemed beyond intelligibility.
“What about Franklin? He can’t do this to us, can he, Uncle Thomas? Don’t you want to escape? Don’t you want revenge on Franklin, on Ottilie, for what they did to your wives? Don’t you? Don’t you?”
He had to cut through his uncle’s gathering delirium. In complete desperation, he lowered his head and sank his teeth into a wounded shoulder.
Nothing. Just the steady flow of argumentative gibberish. And the thin blood dripping from the mouth.
“I saw Arthur the Organizer. He said he’d known you for a long time. When did you meet him, Uncle Thomas? When did you first meet Arthur the Organizer?”
The head drooped lower, the shoulders slumped further forward.
“Tell me about Alien-Science. What is Alien-Science?” Eric was almost gibbering himself now in his frantic efforts to find a key that would unlock his uncle’s mind.
“Are Arthur the Organizer and Walter the Weapon-Seeker very important among the Alien-Sciencers? Are they the chiefs? What was the name of the structure they were hiding in? What is it to the Monsters? They talked about the Aaron People. Who are the Aaron People? Do you—”
That was it. He had found the key. He had gotten through.
Thomas the Trap-Smasher’s head came up waveringly, dimness swirling in his eyes. “The Aaron People. Funny that you should ask about the Aaron People. That you should ask.”
“Why? What about them?” Eric fought to hold the key in place, to keep it turning. “Why shouldn’t I ask?”
“Your grandmother was from the Aaron People. I remember hearing about it when I was a little boy.” Thomas the Trap-Smasher nodded to himself. “Your grandfather’ s band went on a long journey, the longest they’d ever taken. And they caught your grandmother and brought her back.”
“My grandmother?” For the moment, Eric forgot what was being prepared for him outside. He’d known there was some peculiar secret about his grandmother. She had rarely been mentioned in Mankind. Up to now, he’d taken it for granted that this was because she’d had a son who was terribly unlucky—almost the worst thing a person in the burrows could be. The father of a one-child litter, after all, and being killed together with his wife in Monster territory. Very unlucky.
“My grandmother was from the Aaron People? Not from Mankind?” He knew, of course, that several of the women had been captured from other peoples in neighboring burrows and had the good fortune now to be considered full-fledged members of Mankind. Sometimes one of their own women would be lost this way, when she strayed too far down an outlying burrow and stumbled into a band of Stranger warriors. If you stole a woman from another people, after all, you stole a substantial portion of their knowledge. But he’d never imagined “Deborah the Dream-Singer.” Thomas’s head waggled loosely: he dribbled words mixed with red saliva. “Did you know why your grandmother was called the Dream-Singer, Eric? The women used to say that the things she talked about happened only in dreams, and that she couldn’t talk straight like other people—she could only sing about her dreams. But she taught your father a lot, and he was like her. Women were a little afraid to mate with him. My sister was the first to take a chance—and everyone said she deserved what she got.”
Abruptly, Eric became conscious of a change in the sounds outside the burrow. More quiet. Were they coming for him now?
“Uncle Thomas, listen! I have an idea. Those Strangers—Walter, Arthur the Organizer—they gave me a Monster souvenir. I don’t know what it does, but I can’t get at it. I’ll turn around. You try to reach down into my knapsack with the tips of your fingers and—”
The Trap-Smasher paid no attention to him. “She was an Alien-Sciencer,” he rambled on, mostly to himself. “Your grandfather was the first Alien-Sciencer we ever had in Mankind. I guess the Aaron People were all Alien-Sciencers. Imagine—a whole tribe of Alien-Sciencers!”
Eric groaned. This half-alive, delirious man was his only hope of escaping. This bloody wreck who had once been the proudest, most alert band captain of them all.
He turned for another look at the guard. The man was still staring down the length of the great central burrow. There was nothing to be heard now but a terrifying silence, as if dozens of pairs of eyes were glowing in anticipation. And footsteps—weren’t those footsteps? He had to find a way to make his uncle cooperate.
“Thomas the Trap-Smasher!” he said sharply, barely managing to keep his voice low. “Listen to me. This is an order! There’s something in my knapsack, a blob of sticky stuff. We’re going to turn our backs to each other, and you’re going to reach in with your hands and tear some off. Do you hear me? That’s an order—a warrior’s order!”
His uncle nodded, completely docile. “I’ve been a warrior for over twenty auld lang synes,” he mumbled, twisting around. “Six of them a band captain. I’ve given orders and taken them, given them and taken them. I’ve never disobeyed an order. What I always say is how can you expect to give orders if you don’t—”
“Now,” Eric told him, bringing their backs together and hunching down so that his knapsack would be just under his uncle’s bound arms. “Reach in. Work that mass of sticky stuff out. It’s right on top. And hurry!”
Yes. Those were footsteps coming up outside. Several of them. The leaders of the Female Society, the chief, an escort of warriors. And the guard, watching that deadly procession, was liable to remember his duties and turn back to the prisoners.
“Hurry,” he demanded. “I told you to hurry, dammit! That’s an order, too. Get it out fast. Fast!”
And, all this time, as the Trap-Smasher’s fumbling fingers wandered about in his knapsack, as he listened with fright and impatience to the sounds of the approaching execution party—all this time, somewhere in his mind, there was astonishment at the orders he was rapping out to an experienced band captain and the incredible authority he had managed to get into his voice.
“Now you’re wondering where the Aaron People have their burrow,” Thomas began suddenly, reverting to an earlier topic as if they were having a pleasant conversation after a fine, full meal. “Well, I’ll tell you.”
“Forget it! Get that stuff out. Just get it out!”
“It’s hard to describe,” the other man’s voice wandered on. “A long way off, their burrow is, a long way off. You know the Strangers call us front-burrow people. You know that, don’t you? The Strangers are back-burrowers.
Well, the Aaron People are the bottommost burrowers of all.”
Eric sensed his fingers closing in the knapsack.
The three women who ruled the Female Society came into the storage burrow. Ottilie the Omen-Teller, Sarah the Sickness-Healer and Rita the Record-Keeper. With them was the chief and two band captains, heavily armed.
9
Ottilie, the Chieftain’s First Wife, was in the lead. She stopped, just inside the entrance to the burrow and the others came to a halt around her.
“Look at them,” she jeered. “They’re trying to free each other! And what do they plan to do if they get themselves untied?”
Franklin moved to her side and took a long, judicious look at the two men squatting back to back. “They’ll try to escape,” he explained, continuing his wife’s joke. “They’ll have their hands free, they figure, and surely Thomas the Trap-Smasher and his nephew are a match, even bare-handed, for the best spearmen in Mankind!”
And then Eric felt the searching hands come up out of the knapsack to which his own arms were tied. Something fell to the floor of the burrow. It made an odd noise, halfway between a splash and a thud. He twisted around for it immediately with his mouth open, flexing his knees in a tight crouch underneath his body.