The Iron Breed

by Andre Norton

  He wore that ill-fitting headgear until his head ached. So equipped, he watched pictures flit across the wall, listened to that gabble of voice wherein about every third word had no meaning for a hunter-warrior. And those in the room sharing these periods of instruction were all so young!

  The air of superiority worn by the lair people chilled him, seemed to erect an unscalable barrier. The adults Furtig dealt with were curt, always hurried. If they had any leisure, they spent it in some section to which he had not been invited. None were interested in Furtig as an individual, but merely as another mind to be pushed and pulled through learning.

  His resentment grew, coloring what he learned. Though at times there were things so interesting he forgot his frustrations and became genuinely enthralled. He was especially fascinated with the series dealing with the latter days of the Demons—though why they had wished to leave such a sorry record, save as a warning, he could not understand.

  He learned to hate as he had never hated the Barkers, though his detestation of the Rattons approached it, when he saw those sections dealing with the hunting down of his own people after they had not only proven to be able to withstand the disease wiping out the Demons, but had benefited in some ways from it. The ferocity of the Demons was a red madness, and Furtig, watching them, broke into growls, lashed his tail, and twice struck out at the pictured Demons with his war claws. He came to himself to see the younglings cowering away from him, staring as if the horrible madness of the Demons had spread to him. But he was not ashamed of his response. It was so that any warrior would face the enemy.

  During this time he saw nothing of Liliha. And only once or twice did Gammage make one of his sudden appearances, ask a little vaguely if all were well, and go again.

  Furtig longed to ask questions, but there was no one who showed enough awareness of his presence to allow him to do so. What did they all do? Had anything at all been discovered to hold off any Demons who might return? What and what and what—and sometimes who and who and who? Only there was no one he could approach.

  Not until one day when he returned to his own chamber, that in which he had first awakened and which apparently had been given to him (the lairs were so large there was no end to the rooms to be used), and found Foskatt sitting on his bed.

  It was like meeting a cave brother—so Furtig thought of the other now.

  “You are healed?” He really did not need to ask that. There was only the faintest trace of a scar seam, hardly to be seen now, where mangled flesh had once oozed blood.

  “Well healed.” Foskatt's upper lip wrinkled in a wide grin. “Tell me, brother, how did you get me here? They say that we were found at the door of a rise shaft. But I know from my own hunting in the ways below that we were far from that when we had our last speech together. And what became of that Ku-La, who was with us in the stinking Ratton pen?”

  Furtig explained the break-through of the rumbler. Foskatt nodded impatiently. “That I know. But how did you control it? I must have gone into darkness then.”

  “I did as you did, used my tongue in the cube,” Furtig replied. “We put you on the top of the rumbler and it carried us—but the stranger you name Ku-La would not come. He went on his own. And since the Rattons were everywhere”—Furtig gave a tail flick—“I do not believe he made it.”

  “A pity. He would have been a useful contact with a new tribe. But if you used the caller—how did you? Touch starts the servants, yes, but you would not know the proper touch for a command.”

  “I put in my tongue and it started,” Furtig repeated. “I gave no command—”

  “But what did you think when you did that?” Foskatt persisted.

  “Of Gammage and the need for reaching him.”

  “Just so!” Foskatt got to his feet and began to stride up and down. “It is as I suspected—one touches, but it is not the touch alone as they have said, the pressure once, twice, and all the rest they would have us learn. It is the thought which directs those! For you have proved that. You knew no touch pattern, you merely thought of where you would like to be—and it traveled for you!”

  “Until it died,” commented Furtig, “which it did.”

  “But if it died, how then did you have any guide through the ways?” Foskatt halted, stared at Furtig.

  “I—” Furtig tried to find the proper words. “I tried hunting search—”

  “The person tie!” Foskatt's eyes grew even wider. “But you did not know Gammage, had no tie with him.”

  “None except that I am of his blood kin in direct descent,” Furtig agreed. “I do not know how I was able to do this thing, but I did. Had I not, neither one of us would be standing here now.” He added to his tale the finding of the moving table, their arrival at the shaft, rising to the right level via that.

  “Has Gammage heard this?” demanded Foskatt when he had done.

  “No one has asked how we got here. They probably think you played guide.” For the first time Furtig realized this. He had been overwhelmed by the wonders of the lairs, yet no one had asked him questions in return.

  “But he must be told! Only a few of us can so depend upon hunting search.” Foskatt's moving tail betrayed his excitement. “And never have I heard of a case wherein it could be used if the two involved were not close. This may mean that there are other changes in us, ones which are important.” He started for the door as if to hunt immediately for Gammage. Furtig moved to intercept him.

  “Not yet. Not until we are sure.”

  “Why not? Gammage must hear, must test—”

  “No!” That was almost a warning growl. “In this place I am a youngling, fit only for lessoning with those still warm from their mothers' nests. If I claim some talent I do not have, then I shall be rated even less. And that I will not have!”

  “So once did I believe also,” Foskatt answered. “But all that matters is learning something to add to the knowledge of all.”

  Now it was Furtig's turn to stare, for it seemed Foskatt meant that. Of course a warrior stood ready to defend his home cave. But, except when pressed by battle, a warrior was concerned not with others but with himself, his pride. And to keep that pride, those who lost at the Trials wandered. If he had not done so himself, he would have been less than an untried youngling in the eyes of his own clan. Yet now Foskatt calmly said that he must risk the jeers of strangers for no good reason—for to Furtig the reason he offered was far from good.

  “Do you think I was welcomed here, by any but Gammage?” Foskatt asked then. “To stand as a warrior in the lairs one must have something to give which others recognize as worthy of notice. And since the In-born have always had the advantage, that is difficult. It is a Trial in another fashion from our own.”

  “How did you then impress them with your worth?”

  “By doing what I was doing when the Rattons took me. It would seem that the gain of one kind of knowledge is sometimes balanced by the loss of another. How learned you the hunting lands of the caves, brother?”

  “By running them, putting them in my mind so I could find them day or night.”

  “Yes, we have a place here”—Foskatt tapped his forehead with one stub finger—“to store that knowledge. Having once traveled a path we do not mistake it again. But the In-born, they do not possess so exact a sense of direction. If they go exploring they must mark that trail so that they will know it again. And with the Rattons invading, that is the last thing we want, trails to direct the enemy into our territory. Therefore we who have not lost that inner sense of homing, we do the scouting. Look you, Furtig, do you not see that you have something more of benefit even than that which is common to all of us? If we can find out how you are able to fix upon one you have never seen, use him as a guide, then we shall be even more free to explore.”

  “Free to face Rattons? You can trace them by the stink alone.”

  “Rattons, no. Any one of us could spy upon Rattons. Nor does that duty need us going on two feet or four, or will soon. For the
In-born have recently found another device of the Demons which moves through the air—though it has no wings. As it moves so it gathers pictures of what lies beneath it and sends those back to be viewed at a distance—”

  “If Gammage has such a thing, why did he not use it to see you taken by the Rattons and come to your aid?” Furtig interrupted. He had seen many marvels here, but the idea of a flying picture taker—Only, Foskatt was not making up a tale for younglings; it was plain he meant every word.

  “For two reasons. First it has not been tested to the full. Second, it is again as with the other servants; these spy boxes fly only for a short space. Then they ground and there is nothing to be done to get them aloft again. Either the Demons had some way of infusing life into them at intervals, or they have grown too old to be trusted.

  “But what I went to find was knowledge. You have seen the disks of tape which are fed into the learning machines. It is from these that Gammage and others have learned all they know about the machines and secrets of the Demons. However these disks are not stored in one place. We have found them here, there, in many places. Though why the Demons scattered them about so is a mystery. Gammage has a theory that all of one kind of learning was kept together, then the kinds separate. A little time ago he found what may be a guide to locate several different stores, but that was guessing. Much we learn here must be connected by guessing. Even when we hear the Demons' words, we know only perhaps half of them. Others, even though many times repeated, we are not sure of. When we can add a new word, be sure of its meaning, it is a time of joy.

  “It has long been Gammage's hope that if we uncover all the tapes, use them together, we can learn enough to run all the servants of the Demons without the failures that now make them unreliable. And with such servants, is there any limit to what we may do?”

  “Some, perhaps,” Furtig said. “Did the Demons not think that once also? And they were limited in the end. Or so it seems.”

  “Yes, there is that danger. Still—what if the Demons return, and we are again their playthings—as we were before? Do you wish that, brother?”

  “Playthings?”

  “So they have not shown you that tape yet?” Foskatt's tail twitched. “Yes, brother, that we were—playthings of the Demons. Before the time when they began to use us in other ways—to learn from our torments of body what some of their discoveries would do to living creatures. Do you wish those days to return?”

  “But this feeling Gammage has, that they will return—why is he so sure?”

  “At the centermost point in the lairs there is a device we cannot begin to understand. But it is sending forth a call. This goes to the skies. We have tried to destroy it, but it is safeguarded too well to let us near. And it has been going so since the last Demon died.

  “We have discovered the records of those Demons who took to flight when the last days came. If they escaped the disease which finished their tribe here, then that device may call them back.”

  So serious was Foskatt's tone that Furtig's ears flattened a little to his skull, his spine fur ridged. As Gammage had the power to enthrall when one listened to him, so did Foskatt now impress his companion with his conviction of this truth.

  “But Gammage believes that if he has the Demons' own knowledge he can withstand them?”

  “It will be a better chance for us. Which would you choose to be in battle, a warrior with claws or without? For weapons support one at such times. Thus we seek all these stores of disks to learn and learn. It may be even the next one we find which will teach us how to keep the servants running. But, as I said, Gammage thought he had heard such a store place described, and I went to seek it. The Rattons took me. They work with traps, brother, most cunningly. Since it was not known they were in that part of the lairs, I was taken. Nor can I hold my head high, for I was thinking more of what I hunted than the territory I moved through. So I suffered from my own carelessness, and would have paid full price if you had not come.”

  “But you would go again?”

  “I will go again when I am needed. Now do you see, Furtig, what we have to offer here? We can be the seekers, using all the craft of the caves. And if it happens that you have something to better that seeking—”

  Furtig remained unconvinced. “Not until I have proven it for myself,” he repeated stubbornly.

  “Prove it then!” Foskatt retorted.

  “How can I? If I trail through Gammage again,” Furtig pointed out, “then I am doing no more than our people have always been able to do.”

  “Not all our people. You know that well. It is a talent which varies.”

  “But it is not uncommon. I could fasten on you, on Gammage—and it would not be extraordinary. You found my sensing strange because I used the Ancestor when I had never seen him.”

  Foskatt limped a little as he strode back and forth, as if his wound plagued him somewhat. Now he sat down on the bed place.

  “Let me tell Gammage, or better still, tell him yourself. Then perhaps he can see a way to test this—”

  “I will think about it.” Furtig held stubbornly to his own will. He was interested by all Foskatt had told him, impressed by the other's belief in the Ancestor and what he was doing here. But he wanted a chance to prove to himself that he need not fear the scorn of the In-born before making a bold claim.

  “Did you know really what you sought when you fell into the Ratton trap?”

  “A secret place holding learning tapes—but this, Gammage thought, was larger than most by the reference to it which he had discovered. He wanted to find more dealing with the skyward call. We had avoided that section, for twice we lost warriors to the protective devices of the Demons. Only at this new hint of the store place Gammage asked for volunteers, and I said I would go. For we of the caves have keener senses to detect what may lie in wait in places of danger. I was passing through what we thought a safe section when I was entrapped.”

  Foskatt seemed convinced that the cave-born had certain advantages over the In-born. Or did he cling to that thought because he, too, smarted from the superior airs of the In-born? Was he convinced, or had he convinced himself? It did not matter; Furtig was not going to put himself on trial until he could prove that he had something to offer. Though it seemed that Foskatt's story contained a clue as to how he might do so.

  “How close were you to this place you hunted when the Rattons took you?”

  “Some distance. I was taking a circle trail because I was not sure of Demon traps. Part of the first ways fell in with a loud noise when I tried to reach the signal.”

  “Closing off that section of the passage?”

  “No, only the main trail. Look—”

  From his belt pouch Foskatt brought out a slender stick. Its point, drawn along the floor, left a black line easy to see. With quick marks and explanations, he began to show Furtig the sweep of the underground ways. Though Furtig had never seen such a way of displaying a trail before, he grasped the advantages of this and commented on them.

  “But this writing stick is nothing! Wait until you see—no, better—come and see!”

  He put the stick away, scrambled up, and made for the door. Furtig, drawn along by his enthusiasm, followed Foskatt to his quarters.

  Those were indeed different from the bare room in which Furtig had made his home since coming to the lairs. Here were two tables, their tops well burdened by masses of things Furtig was unable to sort out in the single glance or two he had time for before Foskatt drew him to the bed place, pushed him down to sit, and caught up a small box.

  This was about as large as his two fists set together, and he pointed it at the wall. As with the learning devices there appeared a picture there, but this was a series of lines only. However, after a long moment of study Furtig began to recognize a resemblance between them and the ones Foskatt had drawn.

  Foskatt wedged the box steady beside Furtig on the bed and then went to stand by the picture, thrusting his hand into it as he explained.

>   “We are here now!” An emphatic scrape of claw on the wall distorted the picture. Beginning so, he launched into a description of this corridor and that, up and down.

  “If you have such as this,” Furtig asked when he was done, “why do you need to search out these new trails in person?”

  “Because these”—Foskatt came back and gave the box a tap and the picture disappeared—“are limited in what they show—each one portrays only a small section of the lairs. And if you cannot find the right box you have no guide.”

  “All this—” Furtig pointed to the mass of things on the tables. “What have you here?”

  “Many things of worth for a scout. See, with this, one can carry food which is hot, and later open it and find the food still hot.”

  He turned a thick rod around in his hands. It split in two neatly.

  “Food hot? But why should food be hot?”

  “Wait and see!”

  Foskatt put down the two pieces of rod and went to another box, much larger than that which had given the wall pictures. He took up a bowl in which Furtig could see a strip of meat, scooped the meat out, placed it within a mouth opening on the box, and snapped the opening shut.

  Within seconds Furtig sniffed such an odor as he had never smelled before. It was enticing and his mouth watered. Before he knew it he had given one of the small mews a youngling utters when he sees a filled food bowl. And, startled, he was ashamed.

  Foskatt might not have heard. He opened once more the mouth of the box. The meat he took out was now brown and the odor from it was such that Furtig had to force himself to sit quietly until his tribesman offered it to him. It tasted as it looked, different from any meat he had ever mouthed, but very good.

  “It is cooked,” Foskatt said. “The Demons did so to all their food. When it is so treated and put into carrying things such as these”—he picked up the rod again—“then it does not turn bad for a long time. One can carry it and find it as hot as when it came from the cooker. Then there is this—” He picked up a band which went around his middle like a belt. It had been rather clumsily altered to fit Foskatt, and at the front was a round thing which, at his touch, blazed with light.