The trouble was, he couldn’t expect to see what he was looking for: it was more a matter of feel. And for this, this feel, his feet were more useful than his eyes. His feet had to find the way. He tried to see with his toes, to watch with his heels, to peer with his soles. He was looking for any information about the floor of the burrow that his feet could give him.
When they stopped finally for sleep and the only big meal of the day, he pulled out the map and studied it. And he was studying it again the next morning, when he awoke Roy and Rachel; he was memorizing this picture of a burrows network far distant from the one they were in. He could see that it didn’t make sense to either of them.
“What are you trying to find, darling?” Rachel asked at last, when, after much cogitation, he led them up a branch burrow and, after shaking his head suddenly, turned around and led them back again to the intersection.
“I’m looking for a slope in the floor,” he explained. “Any slope, no matter how slight. Your people are known among Strangers and Mankind as the furthest-back burrowers, the bottommost burrowers of all. Whenever Walter the Weapon-Seeker or Arthur the Organizer talked about the Aaron People, they told how they had gone down to them. Never across to the Aaron People, as when they visited each other’s tribes; never up to the Aaron People, as when they traded with Mankind; but always down. It’s the only general direction I have. To get to the bottommost burrow, I have to find and stay on a gradient.”
“And if you do,” she asked from behind him, falling into step once more, “what then? We may get down to the level of the Aaron People’s burrows, but they might be ten or twenty days’ march on either side of us. We won’t even know which side.”
“There,” Eric shrugged, “I’ll be counting on my luck. My luck’s been good. And I’ll be counting on the map. You see, at that point, the map—”
He froze, flinging up his arms for silence. Rachel and Roy stopped simultaneously in mid-step, staring over his shoulder.
There was a sentry ahead of them. The man was leaning against the burrows wall, facing in their direction, a spear trailing down from his hand to the floor. The light from his forehead glow lamp burned directly at them.
Why didn’t he give the alarm? Eric and Roy both now had spears in their hands. Why didn’t the, sentry try to beat them to the throw?
“He’s dead,” Rachel breathed. “Don’t you see? He’s standing there, but he’s dead. He’s been dead for days. You can smell him.”
And they could. Across the intervening space, there drifted the unmistakable odor of a corpse.
The man had died suddenly, while on duty. And he had not been sewered.
Very cautiously, one slow step at a time, they crept up to him. His eyes were open and steadfast, fixed on the tunnel he was supposed to guard, but a gray film had formed over them. His body too was gray: a gray liquid seemed to have oozed out of the pores of his skin and covered the powerful biceps, the alert face, the strong warrior’s chest.
Eric looked him over, vaguely puzzled by something he could not quite place. The weapons, the equipment, the clothing—all were slightly alien, and all were, at the same time, tantalizingly familiar.
They went past the guard, walking on the balls of their feet, ready to break and run back at the slightest hint of active danger. After a while, the tunnel broadened into what Eric recognized as a central burrow, a large, high-ceilinged chamber very similar to the central meeting-place of his own people. Here, at last, they could relax and walk about easily, without fear of attack.
The central burrow was filled, from one end to the other, with nothing more hostile than corpses. Long-dead corpses.
Everywhere, men, women and children stood or sat like so many statues that had been carved to exemplify the full range of human activities. An old crone squatted at the magic of food preparation. A warrior lay on his belly watching her, a corner of his mouth twisted in anticipation. A mother had turned a small child over her knee and had her hand raised, high and angry, over his naked rump. A young man, lounging against a wall, was smiling ingratiatingly at a young girl going by, who, while totally oblivious of her admirer, apparently had no way of passing him other than cutting in close enough to brush against his folded arms.
All had succumbed to the same unexpected flash of death. All were covered with the same gray liquid from head to foot.
Seeing them here assembled, Eric understood what had been so familiar\ about the sentry. This was clearly a front-burrow people. The differences were minor and subtle ones, but he was standing in the midst of a tribe very much like Mankind. A little further along the wall, no doubt, but they were almost exactly as far from Monster territory as his own people. Their artifacts were as simple, their family and social life the same.
And there, sitting comfortably on a mound, surrounded by three women and benignly overseeing his tribe’s activities, was an indubitable chieftain, as fat of body and as craftily stupid of expression as Franklin the Father of Many Thieves. Only the face was different.
Somewhere, nearby, there was probably a youngster who had been preparing to go on his first Theft…
Rachel turned from a body she had been scrutinizing closely. “This gray, moist skin,” she announced. “I know what causes it. A homicidal spray the Monsters use. But I’ve only seen individuals who’ve been caught by that spray. Never a whole people.”
“Well, the laboratory we were in, the experiments—The Monsters seem to be a lot more serious than they ever were about getting rid of us,” Eric suggested.
The girl nodded grimly. “Very serious; indeed. Eric, we’ve got to get to my people soon. Not for our sake—for theirs. They have to know what’s happened here. It’s urgent.”
“All right, sweetheart. I’ll do my best. Is it safe to use any of the food in this place? I’d like to carry away as much as we can.”
“Let me look around. Eric—don’t you or Roy touch one of these bodies. That gray liquid can make you very sick. On contact.”
Eric watched her opening food containers and sniffing at them gingerly. He was amazed at the strength of the feeling that billowed inside him: a tremendous warmth, a tremendous complacence.
At this moment, he felt for the first time that she was truly his wife. She had taught him a large part of what she knew. She had mated with him, and he had poured love into her body. She had conceived his child and was carrying it now inside her. But until he had stood in a great central burrow and seen her examining food to see that it was fit for him to eat—as all the wives of Mankind had done from his earliest memory—until now there had been something important that was missing. Now there was nothing missing: he knew he was married.
It was like Roy screaming when the Monster dropped them down the disposal hole that led to freedom. The scream hadn’t begun then. It had been born long, long before.
A baby’s first impressions are the adult’s last conclusions—with an adjective or two added from a lifetime of experience.
When they left that great central burrow, the cemetery of a whole people, Roy was uncommunicative for a long time. He didn’t even join the discussion by which they decided that to sewer this many human beings was utterly beyond their capacity. Eric thought he knew what was on the Runner’s mind. Before they went to sleep, he told him of the similarities he had noticed between this tribe and Mankind.