Arthur the Organizer heard nothing but the words.
“Well, now I know what happened to Thomas the Trap-Smasher and Mankind. So much for that,” his attitude seemed to be. Eric felt as if he had been filling a storage pouch with exactly the right amount for the Organizer who now thanked him, pulled the draw strings tight and dropped the pouch into his haversack.
“Pretty much like the others,” Arthur summed up. “Leader killed, all his known followers exterminated, one, maybe two, manage to get away. The whole business a sudden stoke—chief meshing with chief, tribe with hostile tribe—little or no warning. A beautiful job of organization, I’d say, smooth, smooth as hell. Except, of course, for this inexcusably sloppy business of escapees like yourself and Roy here. But that, I’d lay to the lack of any overall coordinating control—there was no single individual running the whole show who was able to see it all in the round and pick out the weak spots. For a piece of what was essentially committee work, nicely done. Very nicely done.”
“I’m glad you can enjoy it. Meanwhile, we—the movement—we’re smashed, we’re through.”
The Organizer smiled and put an arm around his shoulder. “Not at all, boy. Not in the slightest. We merely enter upon a new phase. To quote the Ancestor-Science of our enemies: Action equals reaction. At the moment, reaction is dominant, so action—our action—must build up its strength and search for other paths. All human burrows are closed to us, but the Monster burrows are wide open. How about it—are you up to a little expedition?”
Eric stepped back and away from the friendly arm. “An expedition? To deep Monster territory? Why? For what?”
“To get more Alien-Science to back us up. In other words, to practice what we preach. Here we are Alien-Sciencers, and how much Mien-Science can we exhibit to potential converts? A little of this, a smidgin of that. What we have is tremendous—you yourself have good reason to know that—hut it’s all bits and pieces, not fully connected, not fully understood. Now, I say this,” and here his voice rose, and Eric noticed that they had been slowly surrounded by most of the Strangers who could walk. ” I say: if we’re going to be Alien-Sciencers, let’s be Alien-Sciencers all the way. Let’s get the best, the strongest stuff the Monsters have. Let’s get something that, when we bring it back to the burrows, will be absolutely irresistible, not merely as a weapon to back us up, but as an irrefutable proof of the validity of our beliefs. Let’s get some Alien-Science that will blow Ancestor-Science to hell and gone forever.”
Tired faces around them lit up under their glow lamps. “He’s got it,” someone said enthusiastically.
“He sure has. Arthur’s found a way out.”
“Good old Arthur. The Organizer-The old Organizer himself.”
Even badly wounded men began to sit up and grin with excitement.
“What exactly,” Eric asked in a cold, practical voice, “what exactly is it that we get?”
The Organizer turned and lifted one eyebrow at him for a long moment. “Now if we knew that,” he chuckled and pointed up to the overhanging darkness, “we’d know as much as they, the Monsters, do, and our worries would be over. We don’t know exactly. But we know of a place, at least Walter does, where the Monsters keep their strongest, most powerful weapons. Right, Walter?”
A nod from the short, chunky Weapon-Seeker as everyone turned to question him with their eyes. “I’ve heard of it, and I think I can find it. It’s supposed to be the last word in Alien-Science.”
“The last word in Alien-Science,” Arthur repeated as if in awe. “Imagine what that must be like. Just imagine! Well, we go there and that’s what we come away with. The last word! Then let the chiefs and the Female Society reactionaries stand up to us. Let them try. We’ll show them what Alien-Science can do, won’t we? We’ll show them once and for all.”
A man threw his spear up into the air and caught it. He whirled on a blood-dripping leg and shook the spear over his head. “Attaboy, Arthur,” he yelled. “Let’s show them so they never forget it!”
Eric saw that everyone around him, Roy included, was cheering and waving spears. He shrugged and waved his too. Arthur looked at him; his smile grew bigger, more expansive.
“So they’ll never forget it,” he repeated. “Now, let’s get some sleep, and everyone who’s able will hit the trail in the morning. I hereby declare it night.”
Roy and Eric went to the edge of the crowd and bedded down together, back to back: they were, after all, the only two warriors of Mankind present. Just before he went to sleep, the Runner said over his shoulder: “What a great idea, isn’t it, Eric? Great!”
“Well, at least,” Eric muttered, “it keeps us busy and takes our minds off the fact that we’re outlaws for the rest of our lives.”
12
Wandering about next morning, before most of the others were up, Eric observed with contempt that sentries still had not been posted. He had taken it for granted that the leader of a war band would never let his men go through an entire sleep period without setting up a series of guard shifts to watch and give the alarm if enemies approached. True, he had reasoned out last night that, inthe present state of resumed hostility in the burrows, they had little to fear from that direction, but that was only a logical hypothesis: one could not be certain. Besides, if a war band was going to function as a war band, function and survive, it had to go through the motions of discipline whether or not they were necessary.
In the face of such sloppy command work, he and Roy had better set up a personal on-off guard system between themselves every night. They wouldn’t lose any rest: it was quite apparent that Strangers required much more sleep than the fighting men of Mankind.
Apparently, they also required much more talk. Never had Eric seen an expedition begin with so much discussion. He squatted off to one side, grinning and chuckling. Roy came over and sprawled beside him. He also found the Strangers hilarious.
First, there was the matter of who should go and who should stay. Badly wounded men definitely could not go. But how many should be left behind to take care of them? And what about a sewer detail to dispose of corpses? And should a reserve force be maintained here in their base: first, in case of an unexpected call on them from surviving Alien-Sciencers in the burrows, and second, if the main expeditionary body found that it needed help or supplies of any kind?
Where Thomas the Trap-Smasher would have announced his plans to respectfully nodding followers, Arthur the Organizer asked for suggestions on each point. There were plenty of suggestions.
Everyone had to be heard, complimented if he came up with something good, reasoned with if he didn’t. An incredible amount of time was spent persuading one able-bodied man who felt he belonged on the expedition that he would be much more useful staying here among the wounded. Of course, in the end, Eric noticed with a good deal of interest, the arrangements were pretty much those Arthur the Organizer had seemed to want in the first place.
And everyone got up with the feeling that it was what he had wanted too, all along.
He could handle men, even if he didn’t know the first thing about giving orders.
Nor did he know the first thing about commanding an expedition on the move, Eric decided. Leaving behind them the wounded and the dying, as well as those who would serve as nurses, sewer detail and reserve, they set off in an impossibly long line of twenty-three talkative, gesticulating men, a line that straggled here, straggled there, and that was bunched at various points by especially friendly or argumentative groups.