Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II (85 page)

There was a fresh-water pipe in the wall near the doorway to Monster territory. And wherever there was a fresh-water pipe, the Monsters were likely to have laid a sewer pipe nearby. It was down this, probably, that the men killed in the battle with Stephen the Strong-Armed's band had been disposed of much earlier. And it was down this that Thomas had known his remains must also go—the closest point at which his nephew could sewer him in comparative safety.

This much, at least, he had done for Eric's benefit.

Eric located the fresh-water pipe without much difficulty. There was a constant low rumbling and gurgling underfoot, and—at the spot where it was most pronounced—he found the slab in the floor cut at the cost of infinite labor by some past generation of Mankind. Near it, after the slab was lifted, was another, much wider pipe, large enough to carry several men abreast. As with the other one, the hard stuff of the burrow floor had been scraped away so that a joint lay exposed.

Opening the joint was another matter. Eric had seen it done many times by his elders, but this was his own first attempt. It was a tricky business of tugging a heavy covering plate first right, then left, and getting his fingers under the rim and pulling at just the right moment.

The joint opened at last, and the incredible stink of Monster sewage poured out as the liquid swirled darkly by. Death had always been associated in Eric's mind with this stink, since the pipe carried not only the Monsters' waste matter but also that of Mankind, collected from its burrows every week by the old women who were too feeble for any other work. All that was not alive or useful was carried to the nearest Monster sewer pipe, all that might decay and foul the burrows. And that included, of course, the bodies of the dead.

Eric stripped his uncle's body of all useful gear as he had seen the women do many times. Then he dragged it to the hole in the burrow floor and lowered it carefully, holding on to one arm until the current of the sewage caught it. He repeated as much of the ceremony as he could remember, concluding with the words:
"And therefore, O ancestors, I beg you to receive the body of this member of Mankind, Thomas the Trap-Smasher, a warrior of the first rank, a band captain of renown and the father of nine—four alive and five dead."

There was usually another line or so—
"Take him to you and keep him with you until the time when the Monsters have been destroyed utterly and the Earth is ours again. Then shall you and he and all human beings who have ever lived rise from the sewers and joyously walk the surface of our world forever."
But this, after all, was a pure Ancestor-Science passage; and his uncle had died fighting Ancestor-Science. What was the Alien-Science equivalent? And was it likely to be any more potent, any less full of falsehood? In the end, Eric omitted those last two lines.

He let go of his uncle's arm. The body shot away and down the pipe. Thomas the Trap-Smasher was gone, he was gone for all time, the way Eric reasoned now. He was dead and sewered, and that was that.

Eric closed the joint, pulled the slab down and stamped it into place.

He was completely alone. An outlaw who could expect nothing from other human beings but death by slow torture. He had no companions, no home, no beliefs of any sort. His uncle's last words still lay, in all their stern ugliness, at the bottom of his mind.
"I wanted to—to be chief."

It was bad enough to discover that the religion on which he had been raised was a mere prop to the power of the chieftainship, that the mysterious Female Society was completely unable to see into a person's future. But to find out that his uncle's thoughtful antagonism to such nonsense was based on nothing more substantial than simple personal ambition, an ambition murderously unscrupulous and willing to sacrifice anybody who trusted him—well, what was there left to believe in, to base a life upon?

Had his father and mother been any less gullible than the most naive child in the burrows? They had sacrificed themselves—for what? For one superstition as opposed to another, for the secret political maneuvers of this person as opposed to that person.

Not for him. He would be free. He laughed, bitterly and self-consciously. He had to be free. There was no choice: he was an outlaw.

Eric realized he was terribly tired. He'd done his Theft, made the long trip to and from Mankind's burrows and fought what amounted to a full battle—all without any sleep.

He curled back against the wall and napped. It was a warrior's nap, with senses fully alert for the approach of an enemy. His mind submerged only partially into unconsciousness, absorbing rest but preventing full slumber. The part of his mind that remained awake peered restlessly into the future, examining alternatives, making plans.

By the time he arose, stretched, yawned, he had reached a decision.

Eric walked a few steps, putting his hands on the door to Monster territory. To shift it out of its socket was a hard job for one man. He strained and tore his fingers; finally he managed it. The door came away, and he deposited it carefully on the floor of the burrow.

He stared at it for a while, trying to figure out a way of getting it back after he'd passed through the doorway. No, a single man just couldn't do that from the other side. He'd have to leave the doorway open, an incredible social crime.

Well, he couldn't commit a crime any more. He was beyond all rules made by human communities. Ahead lay the glaring white light that he and his kind feared so much. Into this, where there were no illusions to treasure and no help to be expected, into this place he would go.

Behind him lay the dark, safe, intricate burrows. They were tunnels in the walls that surrounded Monster territory. Men lived in these walls, and shivered, and were ignorant, and made fools of each other. He could no longer do these things: he had to face the Monsters.

Could humanity really hit back at the Monsters—in any way at all? Weren't they like a swarm of roaches in the storage burrow who felt they should declare war on a cook busy at preparing the evening meal for Mankind? The cook would roar with laughter at such a thought. Who knew what went on in the mind of a roach—and who cared?

But suppose a roach stopped crawling greedily and aimlessly with his kind? Suppose he hung in a dim crevice and watched his enemy day after day and learned all there was to know about him? Suppose he wiped out of his mind everything that learned fools and ignorant tradition had ever taught him, concentrating exclusively on a totally new way to hit back at his enemy, a totally unexpected quarter from which to mount his attack?

Suppose he operated not from any belief, any preconception at all, but only from a soldier's bitter necessity?

"I'll grow up fast, Uncle," muttered Eric the Only, Eric the Eye, Eric the Outlaw. "I'll grow up fast—I have to."

Then he stepped through the doorway into Monster territory.

The old trap that Thomas the Trap-Smasher had long ago dismantled still hung uselessly on the other side of the wall. And none of the huge creatures was abroad.

That horrifying white, white light again! This insane spaciousness!

Eric turned right and ran along the wall, counting paces. He took the same route as he had on his Theft. Fear made him breathe heavily, but he kept reminding himself that here he ran the same risks, no more and no less, as any other human being. Here, every man was an outlaw, an object of the chase, a thing marked for death. In Monster territory, you enjoyed no special advantages if you still belonged to a people.

Of course, you might have a woman waiting for you back in your burrows, ready to turn into useful articles all the good things with which this place was filled. But she wouldn't be with you at such a moment. Women were the custodians of human life and history and all accumulated knowledge. And the magic rituals they recited were the most precious possession of a people, giving them pride and a fundamental sense of identity. Women were absolutely forbidden to engage in any enterprise for which more readily expendable men might be used. They never entered Monster territory.

And yet, according to his uncle, his mother
had
...

He reached the huge article of Monster furniture and turned left along it. There was just a chance that there would be some Strangers still left where he had met them in the course of his Theft. He could warn them of what was going on in the burrows—they might let him stay with them. Even the companionship of effeminate, talkative, overdressed Strangers would be better than nothing.

As he was about to turn into the dark entrance of the structure, Eric paused. He had been running as he had been taught to run in Monster territory:
don't look up, never look up.
Well, he'd looked up once already, in the course of his Theft—and he'd survived. All that he'd been taught: what was it worth?

Therefore he stopped deliberately well outside the entrance. Making certain again that no Monsters were about, he shoved his hands on his hips belligerently, turned and surveyed the enormous burrow. Yes, it was still a little upsetting at first glance. But you got used to it, you got used to it. Given enough time, no doubt even those incredibly oversize bags and containers, those walls stretching up so high that it hurt one's neck to try to see their upper limits—given enough time, you'd come to notice this place as casually as a narrow storage burrow full of Mankind's odds and ends.

There was nothing he couldn't eventually learn to live with, Eric told himself. As long as he could see clearly what it was.

Eyes open. Look at everything. Judge everything for yourself, with your own vision. He would be Eric the Eye.

He traveled cautiously inside the structure. If there were any Strangers about, they might be expecting attack. They might throw first and examine the spear-pierced body for explanations afterward. Certainly, now at least, if Arthur the Organizer had been alerted to what was going on in the burrows, he would have posted sentries.

And the sentries would be nervous.

He encountered no sentries. He heard voices, however, from the moment he stooped and entered the low tunnel. They grew louder and louder as he turned into the right fork. When he emerged into the large, square burrow he was fully prepared for what he saw: dozens of Strangers, suffering from various degrees of personal damage, talking, gesticulating, arguing. Multitudes of forehead glow lamps created a tremendous flare of illumination.

The scene was like the aftermath of a large-scale raid on an entire people. There were men with slight wounds, the blood having long hardened upon their scratches; there were men with bad wounds, who limped about on a crushed foot or who desperately tried to get aid for the red rip in their chest or side; there were men as mortally hurt as his uncle had been, who—having managed to crawl to this place of comparative safety by themselves or having been helped here by friends—lay now, unnoticed and forgotten along the walls, sliding downward through coma after coma until they smashed into the unyielding surface of death.

And everyone—everyone who was at all conscious—was trying to make himself heard.

Those with relatively minor injuries had clustered about Walter the Weapon-Seeker and Arthur the Organizer at the far corner of the burrow, shrilly trying to tell their own experiences and criticizing the behavior of others. Those whose wounds made it impossible for them to jostle in the main crowd, stood on the outskirts or sat on the floor in groaning groups of two and three, and pointed out to each other the defects in Walter's plans or Arthur's leadership that had brought them to this pass. Even the dying muttered their recent experiences to the friendly floor and suggested, with their last, gasping breath, alternative courses of action that would have developed far better results.

In a sense, Eric thought, his first impression had been correct. It was an entire people after a battle. He was staring at the people of Alien-Science after the other inhabitants of the burrows had crushed them and spat them out.

But, whatever they were, this was his people now. The only one he had. He shrugged and strode into the sharp-angled, noisy place.

Somewhere in the crowd, a man's head swung around and studied him. The face broke into a smile. "Eric," it called out. "Hey, Eric!"

A head that was higher than the others near it. And hair that was loose, not caught by a back strap in the Stranger fashion. A warrior of Mankind.

They elbowed toward each other frantically through the gesticulating debaters, the two beams from their forehead glow lamps making a single line as they kept their eyes locked together.

Long before they met, Eric recognized the man. Tall, thin, nervous-bodied—it could be only one person. The member of his uncle's band who had made his life as an initiate most difficult, the warrior with whom he'd almost fought a duel before setting out on his Theft: Roy the Runner.

Roy seemed to remember none of this as they came together. He threw his bony arms around Eric and embraced him. "A familiar face," he sang out in delight. "Eric the Only, am I glad to see you!"

Eric stiffened and stepped back out of the hug. "Eric the Eye," he said sharply. "I've become Eric the Eye."

The other man held up both hands placatingly. "Eric the Eye. Sure. Eric the Eye. I'm sorry. I'll remember it from now on. Eric the
Eye
. Anything you say, boy. Just be friendly, just talk to me a little. I've been going crazy standing here and listening to these fake warriors, these damn half-women gabble at each other. And trying to figure out what's going on back in Mankind." He grabbed Eric's shoulders and begged: "What
is
going on with our people? How do we stand there?"

"We don't." Eric told him his experiences, beginning with the return from his Theft and the discovery that the door slab had been put back into place. "We're outlaws," he said, when he had finished. "You, I, everyone in the Trap-Smasher's band are outlaws. Who else got away?"

"Nobody, so far as I know. I figured I was the only survivor until I saw you come in. The only reason I got away was because I was on sentry duty all the way at the other end of the corridor when the attack came. I heard the noise and ran back. There was Stephen the Strong-Armed's men slamming it into our band and what looked like a hundred Strangers helping them. They saw me come up and a whole mob of them made for me. I didn't stop to think. I just took off, warrior's oath or no warrior's oath. And believe me, if you ever think you've seen me run, you're mistaken. I picked up each foot and I planted it so far ahead of the other one that I practically split down the middle. And all the time, there were those spears going over my head and past my shoulders and all around me. You never saw so many spears: I bet there was corridor after corridor littered with them."