William Tenn - Of Men And Monsters

Just as they dropped beneath its surface, there was a blast of sound. Roy the Runner had screamed. It was not a scream of pain. It was a scream of pure despair, of horror, of overwhelming misery. And, in a flash of sympathetic horror, Eric understood it.

Despite all their preparation and all their discussion, the same mad thought had been pulling against its strap in the back of his own mind, and he had fought hard to keep it from breaking loose. They were going down, if his calculations had been correct, they were going down into the sewers of Monster territory. Only dead people went into the sewers. They were going down to where the dead people were.

What avail were hours or even days of rational, intelligent talk about the use of Monster plumbing as an escape route—what avail was conscious decision against the dread that had lain buried in one’s subconscious since childhood, since one had seen the first corpse ceremoniously sewered? The moist, rotting legions of the dead inhabited the sewers, and the dead were vicious, the dead were nasty. They would allow no one to return who made the same grim journey that they had made.

That was what Roy had remembered at the last moment. Not the sewers as a possible line to freedom which the adult Roy was eager to investigate; but the sewers as-a cemetery of time itself from which the child in Roy still shrank back in ultimate loathing. And he had lost control of himself. He had screamed.

It almost cost them everything, that scream.

The green rope whipped down into the hole after them. Craning his neck upward, at the rapidly receding whiteness in which the Monster’s pink tentacles were framed, Eric saw the rope come to the end of its length a little more than a man’s height above their heads. He saw it grow thin and dwindle in size, still twitching for their flesh, as they continued to fall.

Something hit them a tremendous wallop. It was as if they had smashed into the floor after a drop from a cage high up in Monster territory.

The water, Eric realized, a few moments after impact, as he struggled back to awareness. They had hit the water.

Instinctively, he had held his breath and tightened his grip even further on Rachel. And the straps that lashed them together were holding! Beyond the woman, he could feel her hugging Roy as they plunged down, down, down through the cold wetness. At least they were still together.

This much of his plan had worked. Now it was up to the bladders he had designed. A pair were tied to each of them at shoulder height. They were made of the water-proof material of Rachel’s cloak, filled with air that had been blown into them and sealed with an adhesive the Aaron People had developed for mending garments.

“But Eric,” Rachel had demurred. “It’s never been tested in those conditions—under so much water and pressure for such a long time.”

“Then we’ll test it,” he had told her. “We’ll find out how good an adhesive it really is. Our lives will depend on it.”

Their lives depended on additional factors as well. On their falling far enough to enter the main sewer pipe, for example. Otherwise, their bladders would take over and pull them back to the surface of the water in the disposal hole where they would be helpless. The Monster could then pick them out at its pleasure.

They were still falling through the water, but they were falling more and more slowly. When could they breathe again? Down they went and down, and still there was nothing but water all around them. Eric began a slow slide away from consciousness. He dug his fingers deeper into Rachel’s arms. His chest was exploding …

Suddenly, the quality of the water changed—and so did their direction. They shot off to one side in the midst of an incredible turbulence, going round and round each other, first this way, then that, up, down, up—and, at last, they stayed up.

They were in the sewer pipes, and they had surfaced.

The bladders kept their heads on top of the swiftly running current. Eric groaned air into his lungs; he heard Rachel and Roy doing the same. Oh, breathing was good, so good! The fetid air of Monster sewage was really delicious.

“It worked!” Rachel gasped after a while. “Darling, it worked!”

He forbore to tell her that it had only worked up to now. The third part of his plan was coming up. If that didn’t work out right, everything they had achieved would be useless. Where did the Monster sewers empty? Rachel had suggested the ocean or a sewage disposal plant. He’d rather not find out.

“Are you all right, Roy?” Eric called, being careful to lift his chin so that none of the water got into his mouth.

“I’m fine,” the Runner yelled back over the booming roar of the current. “And I’ve got the hook ready. You tell me when.”

They were skimming down a pipe whose diameter, Eric estimated, must be about one-half the height of an average burrow. The curving top of the pipe was only a short distance above their heads—-a little less than an arm’s length.

A difficult command decision was involved here. The only way they could get out was through a pipe joint. Assuming they could open one from the bottom—and though Roy and Rachel had agreed with him that it was possible, they’d both looked as dubious as he felt—the selection of the joint upon which they’d make their attempt had to be a matter of fairly careful timing. It would be useless to try to open one that lay within the boundaries of Monster Territory: there would be nothing but hard, immovable flooring above it. Once the pipe had entered the walls and begun running through them, it would be surrounded by the insulating material which human beings knew as the burrows. There, any given pipe joint might well be used for garbage disposal and burial of the dead by a tribe living in its neighborhood—and the tribe would have cut an opening in the burrows floor immediately above the joint.

Uncovering a pipe joint from the bottom would be an incredibly difficult and exhausting piece of work; if, at the end, they found a solid floor above them, they would have to enter the water again very tired and very discouraged. Logically, they should therefore make their attempt later rather than earlier. They should wait until they were certain beyond any doubt that they were back inside the walls.

On the other hand, the water was viciously cold, and being burrows creatures, long removed from the Outside, they were not at all used to cold. Furthermore, they kept passing the mouths of tributary pipes which belched more filth—and more water—into the main channel along which they were hurtling. This had two results: it kept raising the level of the water they were in closer and closer to the curving pipe top overhead—and it kept increasing the speed of the current. The first was frightening enough, but the increased speed might shortly make it impossible for Roy to catch on to a pipe joint with the hook that was tied about his hands and arms. And if Roy failed, they’d never get out.

No, Eric decided, he’d better take the very next pipe joint they passed. The result would be a matter of luck—and he had come to feel he could trust his luck. It was certainly much better than his father’s: he had managed to get out of Monster Territory, alive and with his mate.

Ile turned his bead and peered down the pipe in front of them, examining its top with the beam from his forehead glow lamp. There, above the wild splashes of water and the somersaulting chunks of offal and rubbish, was that it—a dim patch that seemed to be rushing swiftly in their direction?

Eric narrowed his eyes and strained to see. Yes. It was a joint.

“Roy!” he sang out and brought his arm in a wide motion over his head, pointing with his whole hand. “Do you see it? We’ll take that one.”