William Tenn - Of Men And Monsters

“Well—” Eric shrugged. “I’ve been around and I’ve kept my ears open. Especially lately. But I thought those short-tentacled Monsters are the least dangerous. They’re the ones who run and panic when a man goes directly at them.”

“If they have a place to run to. This Monster was too close to the wall—not by our standards, but, you know, in terms of the big, big steps that they take. And the men of the expedition were coming at it in a great semicircle. It panicked, all right, but it didn’t run. It threw back its head. One tremendous, ear-splitting bellow—you never heard so much quantity of sheer fear packed in a single noise! I saw Jonathan Danielson freeze where he stood.

And then he went into panic! Instead of realizing what had happened and leading the men back immediately, he threw his spear away and began to run back and forth in a crazy zigzag pattern, yelling his head off. The men looked from him to the Monster, not knowing what to do next. Some followed him, others kept on going for the rope. Suddenly the Monster kicked out. It was a blind, fearful kick, more like a twitch than a kick, but when it was over there were smashed and bleeding men all over the floor. And then other Monsters came hurrying from all directions and grabbed up anyone who was still alive. I was too upset myself—panic again, or just plain shock, I don’t know—to think of using my neutralizer on the green rope with which they took me. By the time it occurred to me, I was too high in the air.”

“Sure. You’d have been killed if you’d made the green rope let go of you. Then they brought you here.”

“Then the Monsters brought me here,” the girl agreed. “And now, Eric, they’ve brought you here. To share this cage with me.”

Eric moved a short distance away from the cloak of many pockets. He squatted ceremoniously, placing his hands on the floor and bowing his head. This was the position he’d seen assumed by band leaders high in the councils of Mankind when they wished to consider a matter carefully. And there were many significant details in Rachel’s story to turn over in his mind.

First, it was now overwhelmingly clear that Strangers, however superior they might be in knowledge, were not worth a damn as expedition leaders—compared, that is, with the warriors of his own people. They knew so incredibly little of elementary precautions (Arthur the Organizer letting one of his men walk into a trap immediately after leaving the piece of Monster furniture—and remember the execrable march discipline all the way to this place?). And, as commanders, they were downright dangerous when something unexpected happened (Arthur’s absolute funk upon arrival in the cages of sin, Jonathan Danielson’s inexcusable hysteria, a hysteria stimulated by nothing more substantial than noise, but which had cost the lives of almost all his followers). You might make a useful rule out of it: the further back in the burrows you went, the poorer the quality of the leadership in any emergency situation—when you got to the Aaron People, the back back-burrowers, so to speak, you had band leaders capable of committing their men to any imaginable idiocy. The closer you got to Monster Territory, possibly because of the unremitting, day-to-day dangers of existence, the more likely you were to find in any given warrior the caution, the alertness and the adaptability that a man had the right to demand of his superior officer. And Strangers seemed to recognize this too: it had been easy for him to take command of the cage away from Arthur. Imagine a Stranger warrior as young as Eric taking over, in a similar position, from his uncle, Thomas the Trap-Smasher!

On the other hand, looked at with a different set of values, the rule reversed itself. The deeper into the burrows you went and the further from Monster Territory, the more complex the technology, the more extensive the knowledge and the more powerful the conceptual daring. Eric had always known that his tribe had traded off its excess food and occasional Monster artifacts to other peoples in the burrows to the rear for the finished spearheads and soft knapsack material which it was incapable of making for itself. Only recently had he learned of the existence of men like Walter the Weapon-Seeker, always on the lookout for strange Monster goods which could be turned to effective human use, and Arthur the Organizer, with his dream of a United Burrows practicing the new religion of Alien-Science. And now the Aaron People,capable of developing equipment which could combat and immobilize the Monster’s own weapons—this was truly carrying the fight to the enemy of Man!

If someone, someday, could ever fuse the two, the battle courage and cleverness of front-burrow tribes with the knowledge and imaginative valor of the back-burrowers, what glories might humanity then accomplish!

He looked up at Rachel. She had been studying him for some time. Her arms were crossed on her chest and her eyes were staring down at him intently.

“Do you know?” she said. “You’re not at all bad-looking.”

“Thank you, Rachel. This neutralizing device—you say the information about it was vital to the future of your people. In other words, it’s part of a plan to hit back at the Monsters?”

“Of course. But so is everything that human beings do these days. Do you have a mate?”

“No, not yet. What kind of a plan? I mean, is it an approach through Alien-Science or Ancestor-Science?”

She fluttered her left hand impatiently. “In the Aaron People we have nothing to do with either of those superstitions. We gave them both up a long time ago. Our Plan to hit back at the Monsters is real and entirely new. It’s different from anything you’ve ever heard of, and it’s the only one which will work. How come a healthy, handsome young warrior like you doesn’t have a mate?”

“I’ve only been a full warrior for a short time—I just passed my initiation ceremony. If your plans are neither Alien-Science nor—”

“Is that the only reason for your not having a mate? The fact that you’ve just celebrated your initiation ceremony?”

Eric rose with dignity. “There are—well, some other reasons. But that’s a personal matter. I’d rather not discuss it. What I am interested in is this Plan your people have to hit back at the—”

She smiled and shook her head. “Men and women. Practically two different species. If it weren’t for sex, they’d have nothing in common. Now I can’t tell you any more about my people’s strategy with the Monsters—I’ve talked too much already—but what I do want to canvass with you is the subject of mating. Mating, and nothing but mating, is our agenda, as far as I’m concerned. Mating, the pros and cons, the shades, the nuances, all about mating. What are those other reasons, Eric? I have to know.”

He hesitated. “I’m a singleton,” he said at last. “An only.”

“A what? A singleton—Oh. You mean you weren’t part of a litter. Your mother had just the one child—you. And the girls back in your tribe were afraid the condition might be hereditary. Well, that’s not what I call a problem. Anything else?”

“No, nothing else,” he told her angrily. “How can you say it’s not a problem? What’s worse than having no decent litter potential?”

“Many, many things. But let’s not go into them. Among the Aaron People, you may be interested to know, small litters are quite prevalent. Twins are about it for the average woman. For the very largest litters you have to go to the Wild Men whose women never come up with less than six at a birth. I think it has something to do with the amount of genetic distance from our ancestors. Or, perhaps, the differing infant mortality rates. But me, I’ll be quite satisfied with a singleton delivery—especially here, with no midwives from the Aaron People to help me at the confinement.”