Kenneth Bulmer - Demons' World

A gnawing longing to see Delia possessed him.

The ache grew. It blossomed one day of fiery speeches, of a small probing battle over against the blue lights of the barrier, of fresh heart and mind-searchings, into a consuming passion.

He must see Delia!

An unsuspected well of caution prevented him from telling anyone, even Thorburn, of his intentions.

In the seething tumult of those days, when everything seemed possible, when the old order was being changed, visibly altering before everyone’s eyes, Honey had thrown herself into organizing work with a gay abandon that masked her steely spirit. She believed in the future. Ash-amedly, watching her slender boyish figure, her pale set face, the little crease of dedication between her eyebrows, Stead drew back from contact with her. He didn’t know what Thorburn meant. The exploration of the hints and innuendos that had come his way, the mystification of that experience with Belle, his feelings about Delia, had been pushed into the back of his mind in the tumult of the revolution.

Simon would know. A Controller he might be, but he was a man of science. He understood the murky workings of the human brain. Science, it seemed to Stead now, offered the one last hope. If Forager and Controller met in head-on battle the death knell of the human race would be rung here in the dark crevices behind the real world. Stead couldn’t let that happen whilst still there remained a chance and science had not been consulted.

Cautiously, he made his preparations, stifling the guilt feelings that, irrational though he knew them to be, afflicted him with sharp pangs of doubt when he saw the animated purpose of his Forager comrades.

He learned that Forager Controller Wilkins had escaped, and Old Chronic was gone, too. The task of finding a Controller Officer’s uniform was not difficult; the dead man’s kit lay still neatly folded in his abandoned cubby. Stead picked up the smart blue and gold, the dress sword, the insignia, and stuffed them into a pack slung beneath his cape. He carried food and wine there, a map of the warrens found in Old Chronic’s deserted possessions. Then, not without a twinge of doubt and apprehension, he set off.

As a member of the action committee he bluffed his way past the blue light and the gas curtain and barrier with no difficulty. His heart beating heavily, he strode into the warrens.

Every street and level here was alive with workers, pouring randomly from their cubicles, talking, shouting, gesticulating, holding meetings, running; the whole place seethed with an aimless activity. Soon, Stead knew, the workers would be given their chance to join the revolution. As soon as the foodstuffs stored within the warrens gave out, the workers would join their Forager and Soldier comrades. That would leave the Controllers isolated. Isolated and starving.

He had need of his cape going swiftly through the lighted runnels. The cape’s chromatophores went through their pigmentation arrangements, changing color, concealing him against concrete walls and dirty shadowed alcoves, giving him the chance to penetrate deeply into the warrens. As he left the workers’ areas the quality of the panic changed, grew deeper, tolled with a more resonant fear in the faces and bearing of the people he passed.

Here, the Controllers gathered to talk in whispers, to fidget, to wonder what the Captain and his Crew were doing.

Stead passed through the familiar ways, found Simon’s laboratory, and dressed in the reassuring blue and gold, the proud insignia of Archon blazing on his breast, went up the steps and through the oval door. Soon, now, he would see Delia. But anticipation of that could not live with his burning desire to tell these heedless people the truth, to secure their help in the business of routing out the Demons. The revolt appeared small and petty beside that great aspiration.

Lieutenant Cargill stepped from a doorway into the corridor. He looked grim and haggard, but his face still contained that youthful iron, that awareness that the future of Archon rested on his shoulders. He saw the Commander, resplendent in blue and gold, bulky in armor, camouflage cape swirling, weapons aglitter, and he saluted.

Mechanically returning the salute, Stead went to brush past.

Cargill raised his eyes. He saw the grim, lined, tough face scored with the marks of bitter experience, the crinkles around I lie eyes, the thin wide lips clamped now into a line of determination, the jutting chin.

Then comprehension flowed in shocking understanding through him.

“You… you’re Stead! But what— And in a soldier’s uniform, an officer’s… a Commander’s! What does this mean, Stead? Quick, now!”

Cargill’s hand gun snouted up.

Stead brushed it aside, pushing the muzzle to point to the floor. “Where’s Delia? Where’s Simon? I must see them, immediately! Come on, man—where are they?”

The very vehemence of Stead perturbed Cargill, threw him off balance. He hesitated.

“You may come too. You could be useful. Hurry, Car-gill. There is little time. Where is Delia?”

“Who’s calling?” The sound of the opening door clicked loudly. “Cargill?”

Delia walked towards them, pale and drawn, her eyes slowly widening as she saw Stead. One hand flew to her mouth. “Stead! What do you want here? What’s happened?”

They were all pleased to see him, of course, even if their first greetings held a note of restraint.

A twinge of nostalgia afflicted Stead peculiarly as he stared around the old familiar laboratory. Here lay his earliest memories, the beginning of his life with the People of Archon, his first fumbling attempts to learn and understand.

He had traveled a long way since then.

“I don’t know why you’ve come here to see us, Stead,” said Simon, nervous and fidgety. “The situation is very serious. The Captain is considering taking the very gravest measures.”

“What can he do?” demanded Stead with the new arrogance of the emancipated Forager. “We… that is, the Foragers, have simply cut off all supplies to the warrens. When the people have no more food, they will be only too happy to talk sense.”

“Stead!” exclaimed Delia, shocked.

“I thought so,” said Cargill uglily. He put hand on his gunbutt. “He’s nothing but a filthy Forager now!”

“Wait, Cargill.” Simon could still exercise his authority. “Let us hear why Stead did come to see us. Or—” He glanced sideways at Delia and licked his lips.

Stead made no comment on that.

“I came for one very simple reason. In the present situation that we know is grave, I believe that the power of science is our only hope.”

“If more people believed that,” said Simon tartly, “maybe this trouble would never have begun.”

Stead shook his head. “No. You’re wrong there. The present revolution is no fault of science’s; but it can be stopped. It started because you Controllers have been too selfish, blind, arrogant in everything.” He waved them to silence, anxious to sweep away their misconceptions. “I, too, feel like a Controller, but only in the good things, in the manners, the graces, the open-mindedness. In everything else I know, now, that the Controllers are an incubus on the backs of the workers and the Foragers.”

He let them babble denials and angry counter accusations.

Then he chopped them off brutally. “The Foragers hold you in the palms of their hands. But I have no wish to see my friends killed, deprived of their lives and liberty, even sent to work or become Foragers.”

Cargill shuddered at that.

“There are many more workers than Foragers, and more Foragers than Controllers. The soldiers, Cargill, are with us solidly in a fraternal spirit of revolution; nothing you or your fellow-officers can say or do will alter that.”