His spears taken from him, his arms bound securely behind his back by
the thongs of his own knapsack, Eric was pushed and prodded into the
great central burrow of Mankind.
The place was almost unrecognizable.
Under the direction of Ottilie, the Chieftain's First Wife, a horde of
women--what seemed at first like the entire membership of the Female
Society--was setting up a platform in front of the Royal Mound. With
the great scarcity of any building materials that Mankind suffered
from, a construction of this sort was startling and unusual, yet there
was something about it that awoke highly unpleasant memories in Eric's
mind. But he was pulled from place to place too fast and there were too
many other unprecedented things going on for him to be able to identify
the memory properly.
Two women who were accredited members of the Female Society were not
working under Ottilie's direction, he noticed. Bound hand and foot,
they were lying against the far wall of the great central burrow. They
were both covered with blood and showed every sign of having undergone
prolonged and most vicious torture. He judged them to be barely this
side of death.
As he was jerked past, he recognized them. They were the two wives of
Thomas the Trap-Smasher.
_Just wait until his uncle got back! Someone would really pay for
this_, he thought, more in absolute amazement than horror. He had the
feeling that he must keep the horror away at all costs. Once let it in
and it would soak through his thoughts right into the memory he was
trying to avoid.
The place was full of armed men, running back and forth from their band
captains to unknown destinations in the outlying corridors. Between
them and around them scuttled the children, fetching and carrying
raw materials for the hard-working women. There was a steady buzz of
commands in the air ... "Go to--" "Bring some more--" "Hurry with
the--" ... that mingled with the smell of many people whose pores
were sweating urgency. And it wasn't just sweat that he smelled. Eric
realized as he was dragged before the Royal Mound. It was anger. The
anger and fear of all Mankind.
Franklin the Father of Many Thieves stood on the mound, carrying
unaccustomed spears in his fat hands, talking rapidly to a group of
warriors, band captains and--yes, actually!--_Strangers_. Even now,
Eric found he could still be astonished at this fantastic development.
Strangers in the very midst of Mankind! Walking around freely and
bearing arms!
As the chief caught sight of Eric, his face broke into a loose-skinned
smile. He nudged a Stranger beside him and pointed at the prisoner.
"That's him," he said. "That's the nephew. The one that asked for the
third category Theft. Now we've got them all."
The Stranger didn't smile. He looked briefly at Eric and turned away.
"I'm glad you think so. From our point of view, you've just got one
more."
* * * * *
Franklin's smile faded to an uncertain grin. "Well, you know what I
mean. And the damned fool came back by himself. It saved us a lot of
trouble, I mean, didn't it?" Receiving no answer, he shrugged. He
gestured with flabby imperiousness at Eric's guards. "You know where to
put him. We'll be ready for them pretty soon."
Again the point of a spear stabbed into Eric's back, and he was forced
forward across the central space to a small burrow entrance. Before he
could reach it, however, he heard Franklin the Father of Many Thieves
call out to Mankind: "There goes Eric, my people. Eric the Only. Now
we've got the last of the filthy gang!"
For a moment, the activity stopped and seemed to focus on him. Eric
shivered as a low, drawn-out grunt of viciousness and hatred arose
everywhere, but most of all from the women.
Someone ran up to him. Harriet the History-Teller. The girl's face
was absolutely contorted. She reached up to the crown of her head and
pulled out the long pin held in place by a few knotted scarlet hairs.
About her face and neck the hair danced like flames.
"You Alien-sciencer!" she shrieked, driving the pin straight at his
eyes. "You filthy, filthy Alien-sciencer!"
Eric whipped his head to one side; she was back at him in a moment. His
guards leaped at the girl and grappled with her, but she was able to
get in one ripping slash that opened up almost all of his right cheek
before they drove her away.
"Leave something for the rest of us," one of his guards pleaded the
cause of reason as he strolled back to Eric. "After all, he belongs to
the whole of Mankind."
"He does not!" she yelled. "He belongs to me most of all. I was going
to mate with him when he returned from his Theft, wasn't I, Mother?"
"There wasn't anything official," Eric heard Rita the Record-Keeper
admonishing as he tried to stanch the flow of blood by bringing his
shoulder up and pressing it against the wound. "There couldn't be
anything official about it until he'd achieved manhood. So you'll just
have to wait your turn, Harriet, darling. You'll have to wait until
your elders are finished with him. There'll be plenty left for you."
"There won't be," the girl pouted. "I know what you're like. There
won't be hardly anything left."
Eric was shoved at the small burrow entrance again. The moment he was
inside it, one of his guards planted a foot in his back, knocking the
breath out of him. The kick propelled him forward, staggering wildly
for balance, until he smashed into the opposite wall. As he fell,
unable to use his arms to cushion himself, he heard laughter behind him
in the great central burrow. He rolled on his side dizzily. There was a
fresh flow of blood coming down from his cheek.
This wasn't the homecoming he'd imagined after his Theft--not in the
slightest! What was going on?
He knew where he was. A tiny, blind-alley burrow off Mankind's major
meeting-place, a sort of little vault used mostly for storage. Excess
food and goods stolen from Monster territory were kept here until
there was enough accumulated for a trading expedition to the back
burrows. Occasionally, also, a male Stranger, taken prisoner in battle,
might be held in this place until Mankind found out if his tribe valued
him enough to pay anything substantial for his recovery.
And if they didn't....
* * * * *
Eric remembered the unusual structure that the women had been building
near the Royal Mound--and shivered. The memory that he'd suppressed
had now come alive in his mind. And it fitted with the way Harriet had
acted--and with what her mother, Rita the Record-Keeper, had said.
They couldn't be planning that for him! He was a member of Mankind,
almost a full warrior. They didn't even do that to Strangers captured
in battle--not _normal_ Strangers. A warrior was always respected as a
warrior. At the worst, he deserved a decent execution, quietly done.
Except for--Except for--
"_No!_" he screamed. "_No!_"
The single guard who'd been left on duty at the entrance turned around
and regarded him humorously.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Oh, definitely yes! We're going to have a lot of
fun with both of you, as soon as the women say they're ready." He
nodded with ominous, emphatic slowness and turned back to miss none of
the preparations.
_Both_ of you? For the first time, Eric looked around the little
storage burrow. The place was almost empty of goods, but off to one
side, in the light of his forehead glow-lamp (how proud he had been
when it had been bestowed on him at the doorway to Monster territory!)
he now saw another man lying bound against the wall.
His uncle.
Eric brought his knees up and wriggled rapidly over to him. It was a
painful business. His belly and sides were not calloused and inured to
the rough burrow floor like his feet. But what did a few scratches more
or less matter any more?
The Trap-Smasher was barely conscious. He had been severely handled,
and he looked almost as bad as his wives. There was a thick crust of
dried blood on his hair. The haft of a spear, Eric guessed, had all but
cracked his head open. And in several places on his body, his right
shoulder, just above his left hip, deep in his thigh, were the oozing
craters of serious spear wounds, raw and unbandaged.
"Uncle Thomas," Eric urged. "What happened? Who did this to you?"
* * * * *
The wounded man opened his eyes and shuddered. He looked around
stupidly as if he had expected to find the walls talking to him. And
his powerful arms struggled with the knots that held them firmly behind
his back. When he finally located Eric, he smiled.
It was a bad thing to do. Someone had also smashed in most of his front
teeth.
"Hello, Eric," he mumbled. "What a fight, eh? How did the rest of the
band do? Anybody get away?"
"I don't know. That's what I'm asking you! I came back from my
Theft--you were gone--the band was gone. I got here, and everyone's
crazy! There are Strangers out there, walking around with weapons in
our burrows. Who are they?"
Thomas the Trap-Smasher's eyes had slowly darkened. They were fully
in focus now, and long threads of agony swam in them. "Strangers?"
he asked in a low voice. "Yes, there were Strangers fighting in
Stephen the Strong-Armed's band. Fighting against us. That chief of
ours--Franklin--he got in touch with Strangers after we left. They
compared notes. They must have been working together, been in touch
with each other, for a long time. Mankind, Strangers, what difference
does it make when their lousy Ancestor-science is threatened? I should
have remembered."
"What?" Eric begged. "What should you have remembered?"
"That's the way they put down Alien-science in the other rising,
long ago. A chief's a chief. He's got more in common with another
chief--even a chief of Strangers--than with his own people. You attack
Ancestor-science, and you're attacking their power as chiefs. They'll
work together then. They'll give each other men, weapons, information.
They'll do everything they can against the common enemy. Against the
only people who really want to hit back at the Monsters. I should have
remembered! Damn it all," the Trap-Smasher groaned through his ruined
mouth, "I saw that the chief and Ottilie were suspicious. I should have
realized how they were going to handle it. They were going to call in
Strangers, exchange information--and unite against us!"
Eric stared at his uncle, dimly understanding. Just as there was
a secret organization of Alien-sciencers that cut across tribal
boundaries, so there was a tacit, rarely-used understanding among the
chiefs, based on the Ancestor-science religion that was the main prop
of their power. _And_ the power of the leaders of the Female Society,
come to think of it. All special privileges were derived from their
knowledge of Ancestor-science. Take that away from them, and they'd be
ordinary women with no more magical abilities than was necessary to
tell edible food from Monster poison.
Grunting with pain, Thomas the Trap-Smasher wormed his way up to a
sitting position against the wall. He kept shaking his head as if to
jar recollection loose.
"They came up to us," he said heavily, "Stephen the Strong-Armed and
his band came up to us just after you'd gone into Monster territory.
A band from Mankind with a message from the chief--who suspected
anything? They might be coming to tell us that the home burrows were
under attack by Strangers. Strangers!" He gave a barking laugh, and
some blood splashed out of his mouth. "They had Strangers with them,
hidden all the way behind in the corridors. Mobs and mobs of Strangers."
* * * * *
Eric began to visualize what had happened.
"Then, when they were among us, when most of us had reslung our spears,
they hit us. Eric, they hit us real good. They had us so much by
surprise that they didn't even need outside help. I don't think there
was much left of us by the time the Strangers came running up. I was
down, fighting with my bare hands, and so was the rest of the band. The
Strangers did the mopping up. I didn't see most of it. Somebody handed
me one hell of a wallop--I never expected to wake up alive." His voice
got even lower and huskier. "I'd have been lucky not to."
The Trap-Smasher's chest heaved: a strange, long noise came out of it.
"They brought me back here. My wives--they were working on my wives.
Those bitches from the Female Society--Ottilie, Rita--this part of it
is their business--they had my wives pegged out and they worked on them
in front of me. I was blanking out and coming to, blanking out and
coming to; I was conscious while they--"
He dropped to a bloody mumble again, his head falling forward loosely.
His voice became clear for a moment, but not entirely rational. "They
were good women," he muttered. "Both of them. Good, good girls. And
they loved me. They had their chance to become more important. A dozen
times Franklin must have offered to impregnate them, and they turned
him down every time. They really loved me."
Eric almost sobbed himself. He'd had little to do with them once he'd
reached the age of the warrior initiate, but in his childhood, they'd
given him all the mother love he ever remembered. They'd cuffed him and
caressed him and wiped his nose. They'd told him stories and taught him
the catechism of the ancestral science. Neither had sons of his age who
had survived the various plagues and the Monster-inflicted calamities
that periodically swept through Mankind's burrows. He'd been lucky.
He'd received much of the care and affection that their own sons might
have enjoyed.
Their fidelity to the Trap-Smasher had been a constant source of
astonishment in Mankind. It had cost them more than the large, healthy
litters for which the chief had a well proven capacity: such eccentric,
almost non-womanly behavior had inevitably denied them the high
positions in the Female Society they would otherwise have enjoyed.
And now they were dead or dying, and their surviving babies had
been apportioned to other women whose importance would thereby be
substantially increased.
"Tell me," he asked his uncle. "Why did the Female Society kill them?
What did they do that was so awful?"
He saw that Thomas had lifted his head again and was staring at him.
With pity. He felt his own body turn completely cold even before the
Trap-Smasher spoke.
"You still won't let yourself think about it? I don't blame you, Eric.
But it's there. It's being prepared for us outside."
"What?" Eric demanded, although a distant part of him had already
worked out the terrible answer and knew what it was.
"We've been declared outlaws, Eric. They say we're guilty of the
ultimate sacrilege against Ancestor-Science. We don't belong to Mankind
anymore--you, me, my family, my band. We're outside Mankind, outside
the law, outside religion. And you know what happens to outlaws, Eric,
don't you? Anything goes. _Anything._"