“Does anyone have any idea, any theory, why it’s so?” Eric kept at the Weapon-Seeker.
Walter glanced back a short distance to where Arthur the Organizer and the rest of the expedition were hurrying up. “What good’s a theory? It’s only worthwhile if you know something for sure. Something that’s usable. Do you remember that other piece of Monster furniture, the first rendezvous back in the larder? Wide and black with green knobs?”
“Yes. I wondered about it.”
“So did I. Last auld lang syne, I was leading a band from my tribe on a weapon bunt. The pickings had been poor, we hadn’t found anything at all good. So on the way back, I thought: who knows, why not, maybe those green knobs are worth something. I sent one of the younger lads shinnying up the piece of furniture. He got all the way to the top, crawled out near the edge and started working away at one of the green knobs. It turned round and round, and he called down that it was getting looser as he turned it. All of a sudden there was a flash of red from the green knob straight up into the air. The lad comes down in a lump, all black and burned, dead long before he hits the floor. Then, the next thing, all the lights go out. Pitch black in Monster territory, none of that whiteness, nothing. We have to pick our way back to the burrows with our forehead glow lamps. And just before we get to the doorway my people use, the light comes back on, all clear and white, as if nothing had happened. Well, what did happen? I don’t know, I don’t care. If I could ever figure out a way to turn it into a usable weapon, I might care a lot. Till then, just another Monster doodad.”
“Of course, you understand, Eric,” said Arthur the Organizer who had come up and been listening, “you understand that we are interested in the why and wherefore of everything that pertains to the Monsters. As devout Alien-Sciencers, we have to be. It’s just that there is, if you follow me, a time and a place for everything. All safe and sound, Walter?”
“Damned well safe and sound,” the Weapon-Seeker growled. “It was touchy for at bit, though. Is it all right with you if I keep the kid on point and let him lead us the rest of the way? He is an Eye, a first-class Eye. He heard the buzz of a Monster doorway about to open and warned me. I shrugged it off.”
Arthur smiled warningly. “Don’t start shrugging at your age. We need you. You know the saying about Monster territory: ‘A step in time saves nine in the sewer.’ ”
Now officially lead-off man for the expedition, Eric received his instructions from Walter the Weapon-Seeker and moved off. He saw Roy scowling. The Runner was to act as liaison between the scout group and the main body: it was evident that he considered it a demotion. Too bad—he just didn’t have the blood-line of Eric the Storeroom-Stormer, and he should have learned to live with that fact.
The Storeroom-Stormer had been out somewhere deep in Monster territory with his wife, Eric’s mother, when he had been killed. That was what his Uncle Thomas had told him. And it had been on a most unusual Theft. Unusual enough to have called for a woman’s assistance. What conceivable kind of Theft could that have been?
Eric stared ahead and around into the bright, white distances of the Monster burrow. Here and there, he could see strange, huge objects, not at all like those in the larder. Were they furniture? Weapons? And had his parents once passed this way and seen the same objects, wondered as he was wondering? Or had they possibly known?
But all the time, his mind was on the alert for danger: that was the prime function of an Eye. And all the time, his mind recorded the route, making whatever deductions, whatever generalizations it could for future use: that was the best part of being an Eye.
He knew so little. Walter, uninterested in theory, knew a lot.
Whenever they stopped for a meal, squatting against the wall, he sought Walter out and explored the older man’s knowledge, whatever there was of it. Were there human burrows on the other side of this stretch of wall—how could you tell if there were or if there weren’t? That pitout there in the floor, in the middle of Monster territory, could it possibly denote a section of plumbing large enough to sewer a Monster corpse? Why, whenever they saw a Monster humping along in the middle of the floor and froze into absolute stillness in response to Eric’s signal, was there no likelihood whatever that it would come over and travel along the wall like humans did? Why did humans journey close to walls and Monsters a substantial distance from them?
“You can think up a lot of crazy questions, young fellow,” the Weapon-Seeker chuckled. “But that one’s easy. Work it out.”
Eric thought. “We travel along the wall for cover. We’re in a strange place, a dangerous place. We want to keep our visibility down. But to the Monsters this is home. They walk where it’s most comfortable, in the middle, just as we would in our own burrows. They have nothing to be afraid of, nothing to hide from. Is that it?”
“I think so. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Only thing, don’t expect every aspect of the Monsters to be as logical. They’re different from us, they’re alien. That’s the whole point.”
Eric would nod, but immediately come back with another question. Even if the Weapon-Seeker didn’t know the answer, he could have a fact which might relate, or which might, upon examination, turn into an important clue—or which might just be important, worth knowing, in and of itself. There was so much to learn, to be worked out. He tore at the Weapon-Seeker’s mind as if it were a sack in a Monster larder and he, Eric, were a starving man.
As soon as Arthur declared it night, and they all stopped for sleep, Eric would crawl to where Walter was curled up and begin his questions again. He would. ignore a loud remark addressed by Roy to the empty air—“Assistant scouts will go sucking around their chief scout every damn time. Never seen it to fail!”—and ask about any oddity he had observed on the route that day, what he might be expected to see on the next.
Walter had apparently developed a great liking for Eric. He answered the young man’s questions with great good humor. “You remind me of a kid in the band I used to lead back with my own people,” he said one night. “The kid asks me: ‘Our burrows are in the walls of the Monster burrows, right? The Monster burrows are outside and all around us?’ ‘Right,’ I tell him. ‘Well, then,’ he says, ‘what’s outside the Monster burrows?’ I look at him as if he’s crazy. ‘What the hell do you mean?’ ‘I mean,’ he says, ‘maybe the Monster burrows are in the walls of even bigger burrows. Maybe there are creatures living in those burrows who’d make the Monsters look tiny. Maybe there are such things as Monster Monsters.’ Ever hear anything as wild as that?” The Weapon-Seeker lay on his back and roared with delight.
“It’s an idea,” Eric said, intrigued. “Why is it wild?”
“Oh, kid, please! You know why. You can’t have Monsters, and Monster Monsters a hundred times bigger, and Monster-Monster Monsters a hundred times bigger than that. You just can’t have it. The whole thing has to stop some place.”
“All right. But suppose—”
“Stop supposing,” the Weapon-Seeker admonished. “Stick to facts. They’re tough enough and complicated enough. Tomorrow, we’ll be heading into the burrow where the Monsters keep the weapon we’re after. And don’t ask me about that weapon!” he ordered, holding up his hands. “I told you, not a word about it until I see it and we get set to grab it up. I’ll know it when I find it—that’s my job. But your job is to lead the way, and you’re going to need a good night’s sleep.”
“This burrow we’ll be going into—” Eric began.
“And don’t ask me about the burrow, either! It’s the place where the Monsters keep their best and most powerful weapons. That’s all you have to know. Now, for the sweet love of Alien-Science, will you let me get some sleep?”