William Tenn - Of Men And Monsters

Rachel was fairly heavy now, and Eric’s weariness hurt all along the calves of his legs and the muscles of his shoulders. But he couldn’t ask her to walk so soon after the experience she’d undergone. She went to sleep, nestling her head against his chest.

He didn’t go far—just a few burrow turnings, past a couple of intersections. “This is where we’ll sleep.” he said, putting Rachel down carefully. “I hereby declare it night.”

“We made it out of Monster territory,” Roy marveled. “Out of the Cages of Sin, out of the sewers themselves. We’re alive and safe and warm.”

“And we have no idea,” Eric reminded him, “where the hell we are.”

Coming awake, Eric paused for a while and thought before announcing the dawn. He caressed his wife as she lay against him, her head on his right shoulder, her mouth nuzzling his chest. Rachel still looked very tired. He decided to stay in this spot and give her another day of rest.

But, once she was up, she wouldn’t hear of it. “I know what you’re afraid of. You’re worrying about a miscarriage. Darling, if it didn’t happen yesterday, it’s not going to happen. We women of the Aaron People are just as hardy as the females of any front-burrow tribe.”

“There’s a long journey ahead. Many, many days of travel.”

“All the more reason to start immediately, dearest. We don’t have food for many, many days. And we can’t spare the time for a detour into Monster Territory to pick up more. I’ll be all right. If I find I’m giving out, I’ll start drooping immediately. I promise not to push myself—I’ll droop noticeably and emphatically, all over the burrows floor.”

Roy, who had come up and squatted near them, said he agreed with Rachel. “It’s not only going to be a long journey, Eric. It’s liable to be a meandering one, full of false starts and wrong turnings and going back along the way we came. You said last night you didn’t know where we are—it’s going to be even harder to find out where we want to go. I say let’s start now.”

Knowing they were right, Eric nevertheless fought to give Rachel a little more time. First, of course, they had to have breakfast. After that, he ordered their equipment checked and inventoried, their food supply examined for possible damage from the lengthly submersion. He sent Roy off to empty their canteens and then refill them with fresh water from the pipes that always ran parallel to the sewer system. And, finally, he asked for the map that Rachel carried and insisted on examining it thoroughly for clues as to the route they might take to their agreed-upon destination—the burrows of the Aaron People.

Roy was very much excited by the map: he’d never seen one before. Having returned with the canteens, he lounged behind Eric and stared respectfully at it, trying to understand how this odd network of lines could be considered a picture of the burrows in which a man traveled with walls on either side of him and fought or avoided enemies. Eric answered his questions patiently and in great detail: every explanation, every digression, meant that much more rest for Rachel. The girl napped on the floor a little distance from them, her face still somewhat haggard and her hands clasped on a belly that was just beginning to look rounder than normal female plumpness.

But as soon as the Runner understood that the place where they were now was not to be found on the map at all, he lost interest. He moved away and began putting his equipment into expedition-readiness, tightening straps, examining his knapsack for any badly frayed area, assembling his spears in front of him and choosing the one he wanted most readily available in the back sling.

“It’s like all the other stuff of the Aaron People,” Eric heard him grumble. “Just like the rest of these Strangers. They have things that sound great, that are wonderful to look at—only, please, if you don’t mind, we can’t use it right now. It’s not good in this spot, we’ll use it tomorrow, we’ll use it next week. Damned mouth-warriors and their phoney gear. Maps!”

Eric was irritated and wanted to remind him of the Aaron People gear that had helped them escape from Monster territory: the waterproof cloak they had used to make bladders, the protoplasm neutralizer that was the only piece of metal among them long enough to be bent into a hook. And how long was it since Roy had been so pathetically imitating Stranger dress and Stranger habits of speech?

But the three of them would have to stay close and depend on each other in the long, difficult journey that lay ahead. A commander, Eric had noted long ago, observing his uncle, did not allow himself to get into arguments, unless they involved a direct challenge to his authority or some other form of danger to the group he led. Besides, Eric suddenly smiled to himself, Roy’s griping really meant only one thing: he was back in the burrows and feeling like a warrior of Mankind again.

So did he, he realized. And it was good to be practicing your trade again. Until they reached the Aaron People, at any rate …

He jumped to his feet, then, to get away from the thought that had begun crowding in on him. “All right, everybody,” he called, in the ancient band call whose last meaningless phrase was supposed to have come all the way down from the ancestors: “Let’s hit the road!”

A few moments later, they were going down the tunnel in single file, Eric in the lead and Rachel in the middle. Since their experience of the day before, he found himself constantly aware of something he had taken for granted all of his life: the warmth of the burrows. It was warmth, he knew now, that the Monsters needed and created for themselves. But it was certainly very comfortable for human beings, too. Man and Monsters, he was beginning to understand, had surprisingly many similar needs.

Where was he leading this tiny band? They were completely lost, in totally unfamiliar and therefore very dangerous territory, yet Eric had an idea. He was an Eye, and an Eye should know the way anywhere he found himself—even if he’d never been there before.

At every branching burrow, he paused and took a good long look, first at the sides and in the distance for Any’ lurking enemies, then at the floor. The floor was most important. Once in a while, he would decide a branch looked promising and turn off into it, the other two following and wondering.

The trouble was, he couldn’t expect to see what he was looking for: it was more a matter of feel. And for this, this feel, his feet were more useful than his eyes. His feet had to find the way. He tried to see with his toes, to watch with his heels, to peer with his soles. He was looking for any information about the floor of the burrow that his feet could give him.

When they stopped finally for sleep and the only big meal of the day, he pulled out the map and studied it. And he was studying it again the next morning, when he awoke Roy and Rachel; he was memorizing this picture of a burrows network far distant from the one they were in. He could see that it didn’t make sense to either of them.

“What are you trying to find, darling?” Rachel asked at last, when, after much cogitation, he led them up a branch burrow and, after shaking his head suddenly, turned around and led them back again to the intersection.

“I’m looking for a slope in the floor,” he explained. “Any slope, no matter how slight. Your people are known among Strangers and Mankind as the furthest-back burrowers, the bottommost burrowers of all. Whenever Walter the Weapon-Seeker or Arthur the Organizer talked about the Aaron People, they told how they had gone down to them. Never across to the Aaron People, as when they visited each other’s tribes; never up to the Aaron People, as when they traded with Mankind; but always down. It’s the only general direction I have. To get to the bottommost burrow, I have to find and stay on a gradient.”