“Jonathan Danielson was a brand-new band leader, and he was itching for glory,” Eric suggested. “He saw the chance of bringing a trophy home—a deactivated Monster rope, something that had never been paraded in the burrows before. I don’t know if I can blame him.”
“I can. Let me tell you, I can. It was a direct violation of our original marching orders which were to get back as soon as possible with information that was vital to the future of our people. But what’s a woman going to do? Once she’s completed the heavy thinking, she’s got tb follow the leadership of the men and obey their instructions in operational matters. Sexual differences are sexual differences, and who am I to put obstructions in a nice straight burrow? So, there I was, halfway back to the safety of the wall when Jonny Danielson gallops past me followed by the rest of the expedition. They all have those heroic masculine looks on their faces. Me—I just stop and watch. They run to the rope that’s lying limply on the floor and they’re about to pick it up. They’re not too worried about the Monster, because we can see it’s not carrying another rope—and who ever heard of a Monster picking up humans without a green rope? Those tentacles on the neck are just for fine manipulation. But I’m looking at those neck tentacles, and what I see scares me into absolute fits. Those tentacles are the wrong size and the wrong color.”
Eric remembered what Walter the Weapon-Seeker had told him. “You mean they were short and reddish, instead of long and light pink.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Hey.” Rachel Esthersdaughter twisted her head at him appraisingly. “You know an awful lot for a front-burrower.”
“Well—” Eric shrugged. “I’ve been around and I’ve kept my ears open. Especially lately. But I thought those short-tentacled Monsters are the least dangerous. They’re the ones who run and panic when a man goes directly at them.”
“If they have a place to run to. This Monster was too close to the wall—not by our standards, but, you know, in terms of the big, big steps that they take. And the men of the expedition were coming at it in a great semicircle. It panicked, all right, but it didn’t run. It threw back its head. One tremendous, ear-splitting bellow—you never heard so much quantity of sheer fear packed in a single noise! I saw Jonathan Danielson freeze where he stood.
And then he went into panic! Instead of realizing what had happened and leading the men back immediately, he threw his spear away and began to run back and forth in a crazy zigzag pattern, yelling his head off. The men looked from him to the Monster, not knowing what to do next. Some followed him, others kept on going for the rope. Suddenly the Monster kicked out. It was a blind, fearful kick, more like a twitch than a kick, but when it was over there were smashed and bleeding men all over the floor. And then other Monsters came hurrying from all directions and grabbed up anyone who was still alive. I was too upset myself—panic again, or just plain shock, I don’t know—to think of using my neutralizer on the green rope with which they took me. By the time it occurred to me, I was too high in the air.”
“Sure. You’d have been killed if you’d made the green rope let go of you. Then they brought you here.”
“Then the Monsters brought me here,” the girl agreed. “And now, Eric, they’ve brought you here. To share this cage with me.”
19
Eric moved a short distance away from the cloak of many pockets. He squatted ceremoniously, placing his hands on the floor and bowing his head. This was the position he’d seen assumed by band leaders high in the councils of Mankind when they wished to consider a matter carefully. And there were many significant details in Rachel’s story to turn over in his mind.
First, it was now overwhelmingly clear that Strangers, however superior they might be in knowledge, were not worth a damn as expedition leaders—compared, that is, with the warriors of his own people. They knew so incredibly little of elementary precautions (Arthur the Organizer letting one of his men walk into a trap immediately after leaving the piece of Monster furniture—and remember the execrable march discipline all the way to this place?). And, as commanders, they were downright dangerous when something unexpected happened (Arthur’s absolute funk upon arrival in the cages of sin, Jonathan Danielson’s inexcusable hysteria, a hysteria stimulated by nothing more substantial than noise, but which had cost the lives of almost all his followers). You might make a useful rule out of it: the further back in the burrows you went, the poorer the quality of the leadership in any emergency situation—when you got to the Aaron People, the back back-burrowers, so to speak, you had band leaders capable of committing their men to any imaginable idiocy. The closer you got to Monster Territory, possibly because of the unremitting, day-to-day dangers of existence, the more likely you were to find in any given warrior the caution, the alertness and the adaptability that a man had the right to demand of his superior officer. And Strangers seemed to recognize this too: it had been easy for him to take command of the cage away from Arthur. Imagine a Stranger warrior as young as Eric taking over, in a similar position, from his uncle, Thomas the Trap-Smasher!
On the other hand, looked at with a different set of values, the rule reversed itself. The deeper into the burrows you went and the further from Monster Territory, the more complex the technology, the more extensive the knowledge and the more powerful the conceptual daring. Eric had always known that his tribe had traded off its excess food and occasional Monster artifacts to other peoples in the burrows to the rear for the finished spearheads and soft knapsack material which it was incapable of making for itself. Only recently had he learned of the existence of men like Walter the Weapon-Seeker, always on the lookout for strange Monster goods which could be turned to effective human use, and Arthur the Organizer, with his dream of a United Burrows practicing the new religion of Alien-Science. And now the Aaron People,capable of developing equipment which could combat and immobilize the Monster’s own weapons—this was truly carrying the fight to the enemy of Man!
If someone, someday, could ever fuse the two, the battle courage and cleverness of front-burrow tribes with the knowledge and imaginative valor of the back-burrowers, what glories might humanity then accomplish!
He looked up at Rachel. She had been studying him for some time. Her arms were crossed on her chest and her eyes were staring down at him intently.
“Do you know?” she said. “You’re not at all bad-looking.”
“Thank you, Rachel. This neutralizing device—you say the information about it was vital to the future of your people. In other words, it’s part of a plan to hit back at the Monsters?”
“Of course. But so is everything that human beings do these days. Do you have a mate?”
“No, not yet. What kind of a plan? I mean, is it an approach through Alien-Science or Ancestor-Science?”
She fluttered her left hand impatiently. “In the Aaron People we have nothing to do with either of those superstitions. We gave them both up a long time ago. Our Plan to hit back at the Monsters is real and entirely new. It’s different from anything you’ve ever heard of, and it’s the only one which will work. How come a healthy, handsome young warrior like you doesn’t have a mate?”