by William Tenn
In the corner of the cage, a great expanse of material was laid out. Every few hand-spreads, there was a pocket from which one or more unfamiliar objects protruded. It was very similar to the skirt worn by Jonathan Danielson and in which his face had been wrapped when he died. Except, Eric realized, this was much, much larger and rather like a cloak than a skirt: its owner would probably be several times more consequential among the Aaron people than Jonathan Danielson.
"Is this yours?" he asked with cautious respect.
"Mine, all mine. My head goes in that hole and I wear it all around me. It's waterproof."
"Waterproof?"
"Yes. Water runs off it without it getting wet. I've worn it on trips to the Outside where water falls on you from the ceiling. It's also a sort of portable laboratory. You see this intriguing object?" Rachel had pulled a contraption out of one of the pockets. It was a rod folded in sections which she proceeded to open to its full length; at the end of the rod, a few wires attached it to a couple of small cylinders. "Now this device was the whole purpose of the expedition, not so much the device itself as the testing thereof. A group of us in the Female Society developed it and we had the idea it might neutralize the green ropes that the Monsters use. As you probably know, the ropes are based on the principle of protoplasm affiliation."
Eric coughed and nodded gravely. "Like the Monster doorways that reverse the principle. Protoplasm rejection."
Rachel pointed a delighted forefinger at him. "Right! Well, neutralizing protoplasm affiliation is something my people have been trying to do for a long time—and right now it's more important than it ever was. They sent us off, one woman scientist and thirteen men who were sup-posed to protect her, they sent us off to find out if the thing would really work. And it worked. It worked only too well."
She put the device back in its pocket and stared at it for a moment before going on. "We made it through the burrows all right, and all the way into Monster Territory without a casualty. Which is pretty good going for the Aaron People, I'm ashamed to tell you. We encounter a Monster the moment we get here to the lab, and little Rachel steps out to expose herself in the great good cause of scientific research. The Monster lets down a rope to grab me, I apply our neutralizer to it, and it works! The rope turns dark, goes all limp—no adhering capacity, no capturing quality, nothing. Cheers, you know? Applause from the multitude, V for victory, hooray for us and all that sort of thing. As far as I'm concerned, we've accomplished our mission: let's be on our way and bring the glad tidings home. Besides, this Monster territory is not what I'd call cozy. I go stepping off, back to where the expedition is hiding, very happy over the fact that the Monster is all upset and rattled. He's dropped the rope and is examining it with a stupid expression on his silly face. He doesn't connect its failure in any way with Rachel, and, for the moment, he isn't the slightest bit interested in Rachel. Or in her thirteen little protectors. They, unfortunately, have other ideas."
"Jonathan Danielson was a brand-new band leader, and he was itching for glory," Eric suggested. "He saw the chance of bringing a trophy home—a deactivated Monster rope, something that had never been paraded in the bur-rows before. I don't know if I can blame him."
"I can. Let me tell you, I can. It was a direct violation of our original marching orders which were to get back as soon as possible with information that was vital to the
future of our people. But what's a woman going to do? Once she's completed the heavy thinking, she's got the follow the leadership of the men and obey their instructions in operational matters. Sexual differences are sexual differences, and who am I to put obstructions in a nice straight burrow? So, there I was, halfway back to the safety of the wall when Jonny Danielson gallops past me followed by the rest of the expedition. They all have those heroic masculine looks on their faces. Me—I just stop and watch. They run to the rope that's lying limply on the floor and they're about to pick it up. They're not too worried about the Monster, because we can see it's not carrying another rope—and who ever heard of a Monster picking up humans without a green rope? Those tentacles on the neck are just for fine manipulation. But I'm looking at those neck tentacles, and what I see scares me into absolute fits. Those tentacles are the wrong size and the wrong color."
Eric remembered what Walter the Weapon-Seeker had told him. "You mean they were short and reddish, instead of long and light pink."
"That's exactly what I mean. Hey." Rachel Esthersdaughter twisted her head at him appraisingly. "You know an awful lot for a front-burrower."
"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 Daniel-son'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 reverse
d 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."
Eric gaped at her. "Confinement? Here? You mean what you're thinking about—what you're suggesting—"
"My dear barbarian stalwart, I am not thinking and I am not suggesting. I am proposing. I am proposing an alliance betwixt me and thee, from this day forward, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health. Do you accept my proposal, or do you not accept my proposal?"
"But why? You've never seen me before—you don't know anything about me—we come from different peoples. Look, Rachel, it's not that I'm trying to raise objections. But—but, I haven't been in the cage long, and you're moving kind of fast. Too fast for me to understand you. There must be a reason."
"Yes, there is. In fact, there's more than one reason, Let's skip lightly over the fact that I'm not getting any younger and a girl has to think of her future. Let us also merely note in passing that your appearance pleases me and your personality pleases me and that you don't seem to have any vicious characteristics. All well and good, but not crucial. The following, however, is cruciaL"
She moved closer to him and took his hand. Eric felt excitement begin to build inside his body as he appreciated the girl's nakedness now. All his life he'd been surrounded by girls conventionally naked. But it was different when you realized that very shortly you and she .. .
"The important reasons," Rachel said softly, "have to do with saving lives. Your life, and probably mine. There were three other boys from the expedition up here with me originally. I saw them taken out, one by one, and I saw them being—each one was—oh, you know. You've seen it."
"I know, all right," Eric told her fiercely. "I saw what they do to us."
"Once they took me out, and I thought it was the end. But after passing me from one green rope to another—four or five Monsters were in a huddle over me—they returned me to the cage. Sammy Josephson—he was the last one left here—Sammy suggested that they might know I was a female and, well, something of a rarity in Monster territory. We talked about it, but before we were sure or had worked out any conclusions, it was Sammy's turn.
What they did to him—oh-h! I think that was the worst of them all."
She shook her head heavily from side to side. Eric found himself squeezing her hand. She smiled at him tremulously, nodded, and went on: "And then came the succession of Wild Men, followed by you—all with long, unbound hair, just like mine. It's apparent that the Monsters do know I'm a female, and that they're trying to mate me. Now, Eric, I don't particularly want to cooper-ate with them in their search for knowledge about human behavior, but on this point and by this time, I'm more than willing to let them have their way. If we don't, they'll take you out of here eventually and tear you apart in an experiment. And they'll probably get tired of waiting and do the same to me. The best I have to hope for, once they remove you, is more and more Wild Men coming in here with their fangs all shiny and that gleam in their eyes which says, 'Food! On two delicious legs, the way it should be!' I'm tired of fighting and killing. That's a man's job. You be my man and do it for me."
Eric adjusted his knapsack straps self-consciously as he absorbed her analysis and her final entreaty. She was right. Given the situation, the only sensible thing was to let the Monsters know they were satisfied with each other and were mating. And he'd fallen into pure luck—Rachel constituted a fantastic prize, far beyond his wildest dreams of a mate. A girl with this much knowledge would outrank anyone in the Female Society of Mankind—probably in most Stranger Female Societies as well. That would automatically mean a tremendous boost to his own rank, if he ever got affiliated with a specific people again.
All well and good. But he was a man and a warrior. And mating was a serious business: it must be conducted with dignity, and according to tradition.
"Turn around," he ordered. "Let me look at you." Rachel obeyed with complete docility, as he knew she would. Front-burrow or back-burrow, Aaron People or
Mankind, there could not be that much difference in the customs of humanity. A man's Right to Examine was everywhere the same.
She stepped away a pace and turned round and round slowly, spreading her hair high behind her with the backs of her
hands so that the lines of her body could be completely visible: This also brought her breasts up a bit more prominently: they were by no means the largest breasts he had seen on a girl, Eric noted, but they were pretty enough and would probably do. And while her thighs and hips were a shade too narrow as well, he had to remember that the demands of a singleton birth—the greatest probability here—were much smaller than those of the multiple deliveries a husband usually had to take into consideration.
On the other hand, she had an absolutely lovely, well-shaped rump, which, within the limitations posed by the narrowness of her hips, left nothing to be desired. And her face—he let go of the rump, turned her around again and took hold of her chin with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand—her face was infinitely appealing. Large, glowing brown eyes above a small, impudent nose, a soft mouth full of femininity that held an uncertain smile for-ever imprisoned at its corners, warm, beautifully curving cheeks, a high, white forehead, and, finally, clouds upon clouds of brown hair that was certainly of decent, adequate length. While her face was the least relevant portion of a woman's attractiveness, Eric had always had certain weaknesses in that respect which he had admitted only to himself. He was glad her face was the best part of her. Add to the face that truly first-class rump, consider that neither her hips, thighs nor breasts were outright failures, throw in the well-stocked mind which provided a magnificent dowry and thus substantial advancement for her man in any conceivable tribe—yes, Eric had to admit that Rachel was a treasure worth shedding blood for.
It would hardly do to tell her so, of course. Members of
the Male Society must always maintain a certain essential diplomatic reserve toward members of the Female Society.
He moved back, folding his arms slowly and emphatically on his chest to indicate that the Examination was over.
