There was a fresh-water pipe in the wall near the doorway to Monster territory. And wherever there was a fresh-water pipe, the Monsters were likely to have laid a sewer pipe nearby. It was down this, probably, that the men killed in the battle with Stephen the Strong-Armed’s band had been disposed of much earlier. And it was down this that Thomas had known his remains must also go—the closest point at which his nephew could sewer him in comparative safety.
This much, at least, he had done for Eric’s benefit.
Eric located the fresh-water pipe without much difficulty. There was a constant low rumbling and gurgling underfoot, and—at the spot where it was most pronounced—he found the slab in the floor cut at the cost of infinite labor by some past generation of Mankind. Near it, after the slab was lifted, was another, much wider pipe, large enough to carry several men abreast. As with the other one, the hard stuff of the burrow floor had been scraped away so that a joint lay exposed.
Opening the joint was another matter. Eric had seen it done many times by his elders, but this was his own first attempt. It was a tricky business of tugging a heavy covering plate first right, then left, and getting his fingers under the rim and puffing at just the right moment.
The joint opened at last, and the incredible stink of Monster sewage poured out as the liquid swirled darkly by. Death had always been associated in Eric’s mind with this stink, since the pipe carried not only the Monsters’ waste matter but also that of Mankind, collected from its burrows every week by the old women who were too feeble for any other work. All that was not alive or useful was carried to the nearest Monster sewer pipe, all that might decay and foul the burrows. And that included, of course, the bodies of the dead.
Eric stripped his uncle’s body of all useful gear as he had seen the women do many times. Then he dragged it to the hole in the burrow floor and lowered it carefully, holding on to one arm until the current of the sewage caught it. He repeated as much of the ceremony as he could remember, concluding with the words: “And therefore, O ancestors, I beg you to receive the body of this member of Mankind, Thomas the Trap-Smasher, a warrior of the first rank, a band captain of renown and the father of nine.”
There was usually another line or so—“Take him to you and keep him with you until the time when the Monsters have been destroyed utterly and the Earth is ours again. Then shall you and he and all human beings who have ever lived rise from the sewers and joyously walk the surface of our world forever.” But this, after all, was a pure Ancestor-Science passage; and his uncle had died fighting Ancestor-Science. What was the Alien-Science equivalent? And was it likely to be any more potent, any less full of falsehood? In the end, Eric omitted those last two lines.
He let go of his uncle’s arm. The body shot away and down the pipe. Thomas the Trap-Smasher was gone, he was gone for all time, the way Eric reasoned now. He was dead and sewered, and that was that.
Eric closed the joint, pulled the slab down and stamped it into place.
He was completely alone. An outlaw who could expect nothing from other human beings but death by slow torture. He had no companions, no home, no beliefs of any sort. His uncle’s last words still lay, in all their stern ugliness, at the bottom of his mind. “I wanted to—to be chief.”
It was bad enough to discover that the religion on which he had been raised was a mere prop to the power of the chieftainship, that the mysterious Female Society was completely unable to see into a person’s future. But to find out that his uncle’s thoughtful antagonism to such nonsense was based on nothing more substantial than simple personal ambition, an ambition murderously unscrupulous and willing to sacrifice anybody who trusted him—well, what was there left to believe in, to base a life upon?
Had his father and mother been any less gullible than the most naive child in the burrows? They had sacrificed themselves—for what? For one superstition as opposed to another, for the secret political maneuvers of this person as opposed to that person.
Not for him. He would be free. He laughed, bitterly and self-consciously. He had to be free. There was no choice: he was an outlaw.
Eric realized he was terribly tired. He’d done his Theft, made the long trip to and from Mankind’s burrows and fought what amounted to a full battle—all without any sleep.
He curled back against the wall and napped. It was a warrior’s nap, with senses fully alert for the approach of an enemy. His mind submerged only partially into unconsciousness, absorbing rest but preventing full slumber. Thepart of his mind that remained awake peered restlessly into the future, examining alternatives, making plans.
By the time he arose, stretched, yawned, he had reached a decision.
Eric walked a few steps, putting his hands on the door to Monster territory. To shift it out of its socket was a hard job for one man. He strained and tore his fingers; finally he managed it. The door came away, and he deposited it carefully on the floor of the burrow.
He stared at it for a while, trying to figure out a way of getting it back after he’d passed through the doorway. No, a single man just couldn’t do that from the other side. He’d have to leave the doorway open, an incredible social crime.
Well, he couldn’t commit a crime any more. He was beyond all rules made by human communities. Ahead lay the glaring white light that he and his kind feared so much. Into this, where there were no illusions to treasure and no help to be expected, into this place he would go.
Behind him lay the dark, safe, intricate burrows. They were tunnels in the walls that surrounded Monster territory. Men lived in these walls, and shivered, and were ignorant, and made fools of each other. He could no longer do these things: he had to face the Monsters.
Could humanity really hit back at the Monsters—in any way at all? Weren’t they like a swarm of roaches in the storage burrow who felt they should declare war on a cook busy at preparing the evening meal for Mankind? The cook would roar with laughter at such a thought. Who knew what went on in the mind of a roach—and who cared?
But suppose a roach stopped crawling greedily and aimlessly with his kind? Suppose he hung in a dim crevice and watched his enemy day after day and learned all there was to know about him? Suppose he wiped out of his mind everything that learned fools and ignorant tradition had ever taught him, concentrating exclusively on a totally new way to hit back at his enemy, a totally unexpected quarter from which to mount his attack?
Suppose he operated not from any belief, any preconception at all, but only from a soldier’s bitter necessity?
“I’ll grow up fast, Uncle,” muttered Eric the Only, Eric the Eye, Eric the Outlaw. “I’ll grow up fast—I have to.”
Then he stepped through the doorway into Monster territory.
PART II
Soldiers For Their Valor
11
The old trap that Thomas the Trap-Smasher had long ago dismantled still hung uselessly on the other side of the wall. And none of the huge creatures was abroad. That horrifying white, white light again! This insane spaciousness!
Eric turned right and ran along the wall, counting paces. He took the same route as he had on his Theft. Fear made him breathe heavily, but he kept reminding himself that here he ran the same risks, no more and no less, as any other human being. Here, every man was an outlaw, an object of the chase, a thing marked for death. In Monster territory, you enjoyed no special advantages if you still belonged to a people.