Dragging the spear awkwardly, Eric urged and butted him out of the place. The great central burrow was empty of people. Weapons, pots and miscellaneous possessions lay strewn about where they had been dropped. The finished structure of the Stage stood deserted in front of the Royal Mound. And some time before, the bodies of his uncle’s wives had evidently been removed.
The chief and the other leaders had bolted to the left once they had clawed their way out of the storage burrow. They had apparently run past the scaffold structure and picked up the rest of Mankind in their panic.
Eric turned right.
His uncle was a problem. Thomas the Trap-Smasher kept coming to a bewildered halt. Again and again he began to tell a story he had heard about the Aaron People by a man who had claimed to have made a journey to the burrows of the strange, distant tribe. Eric had to push against him to keep him moving.
Once they were in the outlying corridors, he felt better. But not until they had made many turns, passed dozens of branches and were well into completely uninhabited burrows, did he feel he could stop and saw himself free of his bonds on the point of the spear. He did the same for his uncle. Then, throwing the Trap-Smasher’s left arm across his own shoulders and clutching him tightly about the waist, he started off again. It was slow going; his uncle was a heavy man, but the more distance they could put between themselves and Mankind, the better.
But distance where? Where should they go? He pondered the problem as they tottered together down the silent, branching corridors. One place was as good as another. There was nowhere that they would be welcome. Just keep going.
He may have muttered his questions aloud. To his surprise, Thomas the Trap-Smasher suddenly said in an entirely coherent but very weak voice: “The doorway to Monster territory, Eric. Make for the doorway to Monster territory where you went to make your Theft.”
“Why?” Eric asked. “What can we do there?”
There was no answer. His uncle’s head fell forward on his chest. He was evidently sliding into a stupor again. And yet, somehow, as long as Eric’s encircling arm pulled at his body, the man’s legs kept moving forward. There was some residual stamina and a warrior’s determination in him yet.
Monster territory. Was there more safety for them there now than among human beings?
Very well then. The doorway to Monster territory. They would have to come around in a wide arc through many corridors to get to it, but Eric knew the way. He was Eric the Eye, after all, he told himself: it was his business always to know the way.
But was it? He had not enjoyed the formal initiation into manhood that was the usual aftermath of a successful Theft. Without that, perhaps he was still Eric the Only, still a boy and an initiate. No, he knew what he was. He was Eric the Outlaw, nothing else.
He was an outlaw, without a home and a people. And, except for the dying man he pulled along, everyone’s hand was henceforth against him.
10
Thomas the Trap-Smasher had been badly injured in the surprise attack that had wiped out his band. Ordinarily, he would have had his wounds carefully dressed by the cleverness and accumulated experience of Sarah the Sickness-Healer. But Sarah had been anything but a healer to him.
Now, the strain of escape and the forced headlong flight that followed it had emptied his body of its last resources.
His eyes were glazed and his strong shoulders hung slack. He was a somnambulist walking jerkily in the direction of death.
When they stopped to rest, Eric—after listening intently for any sounds of pursuit—had washed his uncle’s wounds carefully with water from the canteens and had bound the uglier gashes with strips torn from a knapsack. It was all he knew how to do: warrior’s first aid. A woman’s advanced therapeutic knowledge was needed for anything more complicated.
Not that it would have made very much difference by this time. The Trap-Smasher was too far gone.
Eric felt desperate at the thought of being left alone forever in the dark, uninhabited corridors. He tried to force water and bits of food upon his uncle. The man’s head rolled back, nourishment dribbling carelessly down from both sides of his mouth. He was breathing lightly and very rapidly. His body had grown quite warm by the time they stopped.
Eric himself ate ravenously: it was his first meal in a long, long while. He kept staring at his recumbent uncle and trying to work out a line of action that would do some good. In the end, he had thought of nothing better than to hitch the man’s arm up over his shoulder again and to keep going in the direction of Monster territory.
Once erect, the Trap-Smasher’s feet began walking again, but with a dragging, soggy quality that became more and more pronounced. After a while, Eric had to come to a halt: he had the feeling that he was hauling dead weight.
When he tried to lower his uncle to the floor of the burrow, he found that the body had become almost completely limp. Thomas lay on his back, his eyes staring without curiosity at the rounded ceiling upon which his forehead glow lamp outlined a bright circular patch.
The heartbeat was very, very faint.
“Eric,” he heard a weak voice say. He raised his eyesfrom his uncle’s chest and looked at the painfully working mouth.
“Yes, uncle?”
“Listen, Eric. Grow up fast. I mean—I mean, really grow up. It’s your only chance. A lad like you—in the burrows, a lad either develops fast, or he’s dead. Don’t—” the chest arched upward for a sudden coughing spasm, “—don’t take anything for granted. Anything—from anybody. Learn, but be—be your own man. And grow up, Eric. Fast.”
“I’ll try. I’ll try as hard as I can.”
“I’m sorry—about—what I got you into. I had—no right. Your life—after all—your life. You—my wives—the band. I led—death—everyone. I’m sorry.”
Eric fought hard to hold back his tears. “It was for a cause, Uncle Thomas,” he said. “It wasn’t just you. The cause failed.”
There was a hideous cackle from the prone man. For a moment, Eric thought it was a death rattle. Then he realized that it had been a laugh, but such a laugh as he had never heard before.
“A cause?” the Trap-Smasher gasped. “A cause? Do you know—do you—know what—the cause was? I wanted—wanted to be chief. Chief. The only—only way I could—do it—Alien-Science—the Strangers—a cause. Everyone—the killings—I wanted to—to be chief. Chief!”
He went rigid as he coughed out the last word. Then slowly, like flesh turning into liquid, he relaxed. He was dead.
Eric stared at the body a long time. It didn’t make any difference, he found: the numbness in his mind remained. There was a great paralyzed spot in the center of his brain that was unable to think or to feel.
In the end, he shook himself, bent down and grabbed the body by the shoulders. Walking backward, he dragged it in the direction of Monster territory.
Something he had to do. The duty of anyone who lived in the burrows when death occurred in his neighborhood. Now it filled time and used up energies that he might otherwise have expended in thoughts which were agonizing.
The energies which it demanded were almost more than he was capable of at this point. His uncle had been a heavy, well-built man. Eric found that he had to stop at the end of almost every curving corridor and get his breath back.
He finally arrived at the doorway, grateful for the fact that his uncle had died so relatively close to it. He also felt he understood why this had been suggested as their destination. Thomas the Trap-Smasher had known he had little time left: his nephew would have the responsibility of sewering him. He had tried to make it as easy for Eric as possible by going the greater part of the distance on his own feet.