“You knew about this place? You’d been here before?”
“Not inside, not in this particular burrow. But }tou know, we were all Alien-Sciencers pretty much in the band, some a little more, some a little less. Your uncle had been working on us, converting us, for a long time. Lots of times, when we’d be out on an expedition, stealing food and suchlike, he’d make a special trip inside this structure, and he’d leave us on guard. outside. He told us how to get in to the square burrow, how to make contact with the Alien-Science headquarters, in case of an emergency. I figured that’s what this was—an emergency—and I came here to get help. Help!” Roy the Runner looked around and made a face. “From this bunch of yapping, half-female lunatics? More and more of them kept coming in, all banged up and all talking their heads off. That’s the one thing Strangers know how to do—talk, talk, talk, talk.”
Eric followed his derisive glances and tended to agree with him. There certainly was a lot of talk going on, a lot of unnecessary recapitulation. But what else was there to do?
A major political and religious movement—with adherents all over the burrows—had just been smashed at one stroke, a concerted blow arranged by chiefs who were normally in a state of unvarying war with each other. The survivors had made for their headquarters which no doubt had been deliberately placed in Monster territory for just such emergencies as this. Arriving here singly and in small groups, they could bind their wounds, rest and discuss alternatives still open to them. In this dangerous, unorthodox hideaway, they could talk and plan in freedom, relatively secure from attack.
But were they? Among this many men, limping and scuttling to doorways to Monster territory, there must have been a few careless enough to have been followed. All this movement in one direction and at one time couldwell have been noticed in the burrows. And, if they had been followed, if their activity had been observed, then this hideaway might turn out to be a terrible trap—a vast expedition organized by the chiefs might be on its way at this moment to exterminate once and for all the last remnants of the Alien-Science heresy.
No, not very likely, Eric decided upon reflection. With the immediate danger behind them, with their own Alien-Sciencers killed or in flight, the chiefs would have returned to a state of hostility and suspicion of each other. For a while, in fact, there would be even less communication than usual between the various peoples, while defense plans—which had been exposed to temporary allies—were being hurriedly altered. Mankind, for example, would be worrying right now about what the Strangers in their midst had noted: the total strength of fighting effectives, the location of the great central burrow and the specific corridors that led into it—and, possibly, particularly desirable women who might be worth a raid. Xenophobia would be snarling through the burrows once more, and alliances would be out of the question, especially an alliance as enormous and manifold as an expedition of this sort would require. After all, a people—no matter how great their need of food and equipment—rarely sent more than a half-dozen men into the complex dangers of Monster territory at one time. They were unlikely to risk the greater part of their warrior force in such a place.
While the Alien-Sciencers stayed here, then, they were relatively safe from that kind of attack. But still, sentries should have been posted just in case. It was more military, for one thing. And they would need every bit of military cohesiveness if they were to survive.
Roy the Runner agreed with him. “I told that to the leader—what’s his name—Arthur the Organizer—as soon as I got here. But these damn Strangers: what can you expect? They don’t know how to run an army. He sort of wobbled his head and asked me if there were any contacts, any secret organization of Alien-Sciencers, in the other bands of Mankind. Here we may soon be fighting for our lives, and he’s worrying about secret organita-ti(ins!”
“Well, he can’t help it,” Eric pointed out. “He’s an Organizer. Just like you’re a Runner and I’m an Eye. If you lost your legs or if I went blind, how would we feel? Well, he’s an Organizer who’s lost his organization. It’s a terrible thing to happen to a man.”
“Um. Maybe. But that’s his problem, not mine. Me, I can still outrun any man in the burrows. He also said that if you or your uncle managed to get here, he wants to ask you a couple of questions: I should bring you to him right away. That’s what he’s doing with all these beaten-up characters around him—filling in the total picture, he calls it.”
As they made their way through the crowd, the Runner bent down and muttered into Eric’s ear: “Let me tell you, Eric, what we need now—in the spot we’re in—is not an Arthur the Organizer. We need a first-rate band captain like your uncle. I’ve seen him when we won and when we lost, he always knew what to do. There was a man, there was a leader! When to push an attack home, when to retreat, when to regroup and attack from a different, unexpected direction—you could really trust his orders. He knew, he just knew.” The tall, thin warrior shook his head. “And now he’s riding the sewer! It’s hard to believe. Eric—what about my woman? Did they do anything to my woman?”
“I don’t think so. The only women I saw catching it were the wives of Thomas the Trap-Smasher.”
Roy nodded morosely. “Not my wife. Trust her. I’ll bet she’s where she always wanted to be—in Franklin’s harem. The way she’d repeat his name! Franklin, the Father of Many Thieves, she used to say, of Many Thieves. Whenever a woman gave birth who’d lain with the chief, Myra would tell me, ‘Five in the litter, Roy. Five! Franklin always fathers at least five.’ And her eyes would glitter like a pair of glow lamps. So what if I was the fastest runner in all of Mankind, what if I’d once run the whole length of a larder with two Monsters after me and lived to tell the tale? My family never had more than three to a litter, and Myra knew it damned well.”
Eric walked faster, pushing through the noisy, wounded men. Three to a litter! The sour taste of his personal curse filled him again. And it wasn’t diluted much by the knowledge that, as things stood, he now had very little chance of having a woman, any woman, to himself. The question of his paternal powers might never come up in this huge, all-male band of outlaws. Any woman they found…
Arthur the Organizer strode out from the clump of vociferous Strangers. He extended his arms in a warm greeting, but his peculiar eyes had nothing to do with warmth. They spun and spun in anxious multiple calculations.
“Welcome, Eric,” he said. “Welcome, welcome. I’ve been hearing a rumor about your uncle. I hope, I sincerely hope, it’s not so.”
“He’s dead. Dead and sewered.” Eric fought to control a sudden, murderous anger. His uncle, it was true, had used him, Eric, had used his band and his wives, but, after all, these had been his uncle’s own: they had been his to use if he so chose. His uncle had been his uncle, and a great one in Mankind.
This man—this Stranger—with his Stranger ambitions his Stranger contempt, based on pure ignorance, for whatever was truly majestic and noble—what did he know of Mankind? What did he know of what it had meant to Thomas the Trap-Smasher to be chief of such a people?
He gave the Organizer the same recent history he’d given Roy, skipping much of the personal detail. Partly, he knew the Organizer wouldn’t be interested in these minor touches; but partly, his rage at the outsider, standing there, nodding and grunting and checking off points to himself, his rage kept creeping into his voice and coul4l only_ be controlled by cutting the story as short as possible.