“The Aaron? You mean the guard commandant.”
“I do not mean the guard commandant,” she told him imperiously. “I mean the Aaron. I want to speak to the Aaron direct. And you’ll put me through immediately, if you know what’s good for you.”
The man stared at her. Then he walked to the string telegraph and began to pull on it in a series of rhythmic, staccato jerks. When he had finished and let go, it immediately began to jerk out a reply, tinkling, in the process, a tiny hammer and anvil to which it was attached. Rachel and he nodded when it had stopped, she in triumph, he with eyebrows raised and very respectfully. “All right,” he said. “You’re connected. Please feel free to use it as long as you like.”
Rachel apparently felt free to use it very long indeed. While she worked away at the instrument, pausing every once in a while to hear a question or a response, Eric, still with hands achingly high above his head, took the opportunity to study his guards.
They all wore the skirts he had seen on Jonathan Danielson, short skirts with many, many small pockets. And their hair was tied in the back, Stranger fashion. Besides the bows with which they were armed, and the quivers of arrows, they each carried a single spear in a rather beautifully decorated back-sling. But the spear was far too heavy to be used for anything but very close infighting, Eric judged. They looked very much like each other—like Jonathan Danielson—like Rachel. These people were inbred!
He found their warrior discipline highly questionable. Depending on the power and swiftness of their weapons, admittedly unique in the burrows, they were standing far too close to the prisoners. One or the other of them was constantly glancing at Rachel and trying to follow the conversation over the string telegraph. From time to time, all three of them would be looking at the girl. Two fast, tough warriors, like Roy and himself, might be able to take them, even from this position.
The Runner, thinking the same thoughts, nodded at him. Eric grinned.
Rachel called the officer of the guard to listen as the telegraph tinkled out a last response. “You two men,” be said to Eric and Roy, in a relatively friendly voice. ” You can lower your arms and do whatever you like. The Aaron says you are honored guests of our people, and I’m to serve as your escort. Anything you want, you ask me.”
They walked past the guard post, leaving the other two men still on duty. “Well!” Eric said to Rachel, “This is more like it!”
She threw her arms around one of his and squeezed it. “I wanted you to come into our burrows as a free man and a proud one. That was the main reason I asked to speak to the Aaron, darling. But it turns out there are other reasons that make it a very good thing that I did. Our people were hardly hurt at all by the spray, but we know now we have to make our move very soon.”
“The Plan, you mean? The Plan to hit back at the Monsters?”
“Yes. it goes into action immediately. There’s a ship on the roof.”
Eric came to a dead stop while he considered what she had said. “The roof” had to be the roof of the whole enormous Monster dwelling. And “a ship” meant only one thing: a spaceship. Could an entire spaceship—one large enough to transport dozens and dozens of Monsters—could it be accommodated on the roof of a single house? And wouldn’t it destroy the house when it took off? He asked Rachel.
She shook her head impatiently. “They don’t use rockets as our ancestors did. As far as we know, the ships that take off from the roof are combination lifeboats and ferry launches. We have good reason to believe they rendezvous with a mother ship somewhere near Pluto. They enter the mother ship and travel to the destination with her.”
“But then—your Plan—”
Rachel kissed him. “I turn off here. I have to go to the headquarters of the Female Society and help assemble our neutralizers—now that we know they work. Everything has been set to go for a long time: we’ve been held up for lack of an effective neutralizer. I’ll see you later in the Aaron’s burrow, darling.” She stopped on the verge of darting up a side corridor. “Feel free to ask the Aaron any question you want, Eric. I’ve made him understand what a dear, wonderful genius you are!”
And she was gone toward a slight glow in the far distance.
A few moments later, they came to a huge slab which completely blocked off the corridor, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. The guard officer jerked out the password on the string telegraph which, at this point, entered a wall. In reply, the slab moved smoothly up into the air, disappearing into a snug socket that was cut out of the ceiling.
Eric heard Roy gasp—and agreed with him. The technology of these people! No wonder the homicidal spray had not wiped them out.
The slab slid down behind them, and they found themselves standing before a series of enormous burrows, each one larger than the great central meeting place of Mankind. Monster territory dwarfed these burrows, it was true, but Monster territory alone.
Hundreds of fat glow lamps hanging from the ceiling lit the place. Crowds of people moved about in these burrows, along the floor and along galleries which ran overhead. Any given crowd was the size of the whole population of Mankind. Eric sensed that there were more of them about than usual, and that they were moving faster than they normally did. There was a feeling of hurry, an urgency in the air. People seemed to be packing goods and assembling in groups, both according to some prearranged plan.
He asked the guard officer if this were so. “Yes,” the man said, pulling at his lip and sighing. “We’ve began drilling at it ever since I was a kid. And today it stops being just a drill. It’s like the difference between real battle and a parade. You guys know what I mean.”
“I wouldn’t like to leave a home as comfortable and as safe as this,” Roy told him.
“Well, it’s not safe anymore. That’s the point. The Monsters have been reaching out for us: they’ve been getting closer and closer. And the Plan—the Plan is the Plan. You people came back with the last vital piece of information.”
It took them a long time to reach the Aaron’s burrow, and Eric bad learned a great deal before they got there. He had passed rows of cages filled with rats that the Aaron People had managed to preserve for research connected with the Plan. He had never seen rats before. “As pests, they were indestructible,” Rachel had told him. “As food, the legends say, they disappeared overnight.”
He waited, highly disturbed, while the strong looking old man, whose cascades of unbound white hair poured down to his shoulders, gave a few last orders to the throng of subordinate officials. “That should be it for a while,” the Aaron said. “Don’t bother me unless there’s a real emergency—Mike Raphaelson will handle everything else. I want to speak, to the man who made this day finally possible for us.” He gestured at Eric with his outstretched hand, causing the officials to turn in the direction he pointed with startled, but nonetheless warm, smiles. Off to the right, where he was standing with the guard officer, Roy waved proudly and encouragingly.
“Now then, Eric the Eye, Eric the Only,” the Aaron half-sung to himself, picking up a document from the large table in front of him and studying it. “Eric, who successfully planned and led the only escape from Monster cages ever achieved by a human being—let me ask you this: are you willing to join our people? Of course you are, of course you are,” he went on before Eric had a chance to say a word. “Rachel Esthersdaughter is your mate, and you have no people of your own. You’ll be initiated into the Male Society a few days after we’re under way. I’ll be your sponsor. We don’t have a Theft for a test of manhood, as your tribe does—we have an Achievement. Your Achievement, of course, will be the escape. Quite an Achievement. After the ceremony, you’ll say a few words. No dance of triumph, or anything like that: just a short speech. It’s customary to recite the details of your achievement—very superficially, you understand—then to thank everybody, then to sit down. Any questions? No, of course not—it’s simple enough. Now, once you’re officially a member of our people, I don’t see why I couldn’t—Yes, I think I will.”