“So that’s the primary reason I thought you were a Wild Man,” the girl was saying. “Because the big fellow did. He’s already deposited two Wild Men in here with me. Luckily, he dropped them in one at a time. I was able to kill each of them the moment they landed, before they could collect their faculties and see how pink and edible I was.”
“You mean—There really are such things as Wild Men?”
“Really are such things as Wild Men? You’ve never seen one? Sweet Aaron the Leader, where are you from?”
From Mankind, Eric started to say, with his old, stiff-backed pride. Then he remembered how it sounded to Strangers—he had learned a lot lately. “I’m from a front-burrow tribe,” he said. “A rather small one. I don’t think you’ve heard of us.”
The girl nodded. “A front-burrow tribe—that would explain your unlaced hair. And anyone with hair hanging loose is somehow related to the Wild Men as far as the Monsters are concerned. They seem to know enough about me to suspect I’m female—one of the few fully human females they’ve ever caught, I guess—but because my hair hangs loose they keep hauling Wild Men in here for-me to mate with. And it’s gotten pretty hectic, let me tell you! The way I feel about myself, a mate for someone maybe, a dinner no. I’d been conditioned to expect nothing but Wild Men, and the moment I saw you with all that flopping hair, I said to myself, Rachel, here we go again. If I’d had any sense, I’d have paid some attention to the fact that you were carrying spears and knapsacks and all kinds of fully human equipment.”
“Your name is Rachel? Mine’s Eric, Eric the Eye.”
She scrambled to her feet and held out a small hand warmly. “Hello, Eric. I’m Rachel Esthersdaughter, Rachel for short. It’s good to have someone to talk to. A front-burrower,” she mused. “Naturally, you’ve never seen Wild Men. They practically never get to the front burrows—it’s too far from the Outside for their comfort. But my people have to be battling them back to their wide open Spaces all the time. The Monsters have apparently been picking up a Iot of them, though, for experimental purposes; they must have traps all over the Outside. Hey, look.”
Eric followed her gaze upwards. The Monster who had brought him was swinging ponderously around and moving off.
Rachel giggled. “Ah-h, how sweet. He feels he’s made a match at last. He wants to leave the lovers alone. First time in a long while he hasn’t had to remove a corpse from this cage immediately afterward.”
Feeling awkward and embarrassed, Eric inquired: “What made him decide that everything is all right?”
“Well, first, the fact that I didn’t kill you, of course. Then he sees us shaking hands. I don’t think they know any more about us, really, than we know about them. They probably think the act of shaking hands is it. You know, Love’s Old Sweet Song, one mad moment of passion, my soul shudders and my senses reel,”
Eric felt his face turning red. He’d never come across any woman as direct and as casual as this; it was particularly disconcerting in combination with the unbound hair that denoted an unmarried state. He tried to change the subject. “You’re from the Aaron People, Rachel, aren’t you?”
She had started to walk away from him to a corner of the cage. Now she turned back. “How did you know? Front-burrowers rarely reach our base… Oh, I remember. I called on Sweet Aaron the Leader.”
“That was part of it. And there was your name. In the cage I came from, there was a man of the Aaron People with a name like yours. Jonathan Danielson.”
She clutched at his arm. “Jonny? Alive?”
“He died just before I was taken out of the cage. He said that someone called Saul Davidson had also been captured alive, but the Monsters dissected him.”
Rachel’s eyes shut tight. “Ooh. Saul was my cousin. He was my favorite cousin. We were thinking of asking permission of the Aaron to mate after we came back from this expedition.”
Eric patted her hand which was digging into the muscle of his arm. “Well, the other news I got from Jonathan Danielson is not too good either. He said all fourteen members of the expedition were killed. One blow from a Monster’s foot.”
Shaking herself, the girl straightened. “Nonsense. I was part of the expedition, and I wasn’t harmed. I know of at least three others who were captured and used for experiments. Jonathan Danielson was a bad, bad leader, like all our men in this kind of situation—they’re too scholarly, they’re not able to handle action and emergencies. He didn’t see what happened to the rest of us because he was in a blind panic at the time.”
“A band leader who panicked? I never heard of such a thing.”
She took a deep breath and the wild, merry grin came back to her lips. “There are more things between the front and back burrows, Eric, my friend, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” She punched at him lightly. “Now, don’t get mad—I’m honestly not making fun of you. Your face gets all squooshy when you get upset. Come over here: I want to show you what I mean.”
In the corner of the cage, a great expanse of material was laid out. Every few handspreads, there was a pocket from which one or more unfamiliar objects protruded. It was very similar to the skirt worn by Jonathan Danielson and in which his face had been wrapped when he died. Except, Eric realized, this was much, much larger and rather like a cloak than a skirt: its owner would probably be several times more consequential among the Aaron people than Jonathan Danielson.
“Is this yours?” he asked with cautious respect.
“Mine, all mine. My head goes in that hole and I wear it all around me. It’s waterproof.”
“Waterproof?”
“Yes. Water runs off it without it getting wet. I’ve worn it on trips to the Outside where water falls on you from the ceiling. It’s also a sort of portable laboratory. You see this intriguing object?” Rachel had pulled a contraption out of one of the pockets. It was a rod folded in sections which she proceeded to open to its full length; at the end of the rod, a few wires attached it to a couple of small cylinders. “Now this device was the whole purpose of the expedition, not so much the device itself as the testing thereof. A group of us in the Female Society developed it and we had the idea it might neutralize the green ropes that the Monsters use. As you probably know, the ropes are based on the principle of protoplasm affiliation.”
Eric coughed and nodded gravely. “Like the Monster doorways that reverse the principle. Protoplasm rejection.”
Rachel pointed a delighted forefinger at him. “Right! Well, neutralizing protoplasm affiliation is something my people have been trying to do for a long time—and right now it’s more important than it ever was. They sent us off, one woman scientist and thirteen men who were supposed to protect her, they sent us off to find out if the thing would really work. And it worked. It worked only too well.”
She put the device back in its pocket and stared at it for a moment before going on. “We made it through the burrows all right, and all the way into Monster Territory without a casualty. Which is pretty good going for the Aaron People, I’m ashamed to tell you. We encounter a Monster the moment we get here to the lab, and little Rachel steps out to expose herself in the great good cause of scientific research. The Monster lets down a rope to grab me, I apply our neutralizer to it, and it works! The rope turns dark, goes all limp—no adhering capacity, no capturing quality, nothing. Cheers, you know? Applause from the multitude, V for victory, hooray for us and all that sort of thing. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve accomplished our mission: let’s be on our way and bring the glad tidings home. Besides, this Monster territory is not what I’d call cozy. I go stepping off, back to where the expedition is hiding, very happy over the fact that the Monster is all upset and rattled. He’s dropped the rope and is examining it with a stupid expression on his silly face. He doesn’t connect its failure in any way with Rachel, and, for the moment, he isn’t the slightest bit interested in Rachel. Or in her thirteen little protectors. They, unfortunately, have other ideas.”