by William Tenn
There was a click from one of the Monsters, then a long, scraping musical note. The ropes began acting even more like live things. They slid into the rodlike structure and among the upright posts. Wherever they touched a man, they turned completely dark and he was carried along with them, apparently stuck to their surface.
"All together, now!" Eric heard Arthur the Organizer yelling. "Stay together and work on these ropes. All we have to do is get each man free—" Then a rope touched him in passing and he became just another shrieking attachment, alternately tugging and pushing at it. In a few brief moments, every man in the other structure was a madly wriggling prisoner.
"They seem to want us alive," Walter whispered to Eric. "And do you notice how these Monsters move around? They're a lot more deliberate than any I've ever seen before."
With their clusters of screaming, arm-waving humanity, the green ropes were picked up one at a time by the Monsters. Eric saw that the long necks came down and the pink tentacles near the head did the grasping. The tentacles, then, were the equivalent of hands—or fingers.
"There goes the entire expedition!" Roy called out hysterically. "What do we do now? What the hell do we do now?"
Walter shot an angry scowl in his direction. "Keep your voice down, you damn fool! If you lose control of yourself, we're all three dead."
As if in corroboration, a long neck twisted down out of the whiteness above, and a Monster's head swung to and fro inquiringly outside the rodlike structure in which they were hiding. It was only a man's height above the floor and Eric, nauseated with fear, felt that the eyes, in each of which a narrow, purple iris swam, were staring directly at him. And that pointed, stinking mouth—at least three men could disappear into it without creating a noticeable bulge!
He forced himself to stand absolutely still, although every muscle in his body yearned to leap off and make a run for it. Those pink tentacles—this close, for the first time, he saw how incredibly long they were—they could probably grab him up with ease.
But the monster, though staring directly in his direction, did not seem to see him. The head poked around among the rods and a corner of it touched Roy where he stood rigidly a short distance away.
The Runner threw his hands up, screamed—and ran. Instantly, the head was pulled up out of sight. Roy flung himself to the other end of the structure.
"Now we're in for it," said Walter the Weapon-Seeker grimly. The two of them saw a rope drop among the rods near Roy. It slid toward him smoothly, caught him—and kept going. It was going for them.
"We scatter," the Weapon-Seeker ordered. "Good luck, kid."
They leaped apart in opposite directions. Eric bent over, trying to keep his body low, for minimum visibility, and sped in a zigzag course among the rods. If he could get to the other side, there might be another structure nearby—
He heard Walter yell, and he spent a precious moment on a look. The Weapon-Seeker was now caught on the green rope only a few paces from the struggling Runner. And the rope was sliding swiftly at Eric, pulling both men along with it.
Eric straightened. Visibility was unimportant now—he might as well be running as fast as he could.
He heard the yells of Walter and Roy coming closer and closer behind him. He could not run any faster. He just could not run any faster...
Swift, terrible cold touched his side and he was pulled off his feet. He found himself screaming. He hammered at the green rope, dark black where it was attached to his hip. It was like a part of him—it couldn't be pulled off. He screamed and screamed and screamed.
A Monster head came down and one of the pink tentacles grasped an end of the rope. Up they went, the three of them, screaming, flailing their arms and legs, beating against the rope with their fists, up they went, higher and higher, into the dizzying whiteness, up, up they went to where the floor was no longer visible, to where the Monsters could examine them, the Monsters whose prisoners they were.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Eric was never able to remember clearly what happened afterward. It was as if a massive hysteria had crashed into his mind and obliterated most of the record. There were isolated, scattered impressions: the rope from which he hung being passed from one neckful of pink tentacles to another, a great purple eye coming intently close, a gust of stinking, suffocating Monster breath—but over all beat the memory of men screaming as they dangled from the heights in clusters all around him, his own will and self-awareness completely lost in that hoarse, unending chorus of the doomed.
The impressions he retained of that moment became coherent only after the rope to which he, Walter and Roy were attached had been dipped by a Monster into a large, transparent box and he suddenly found himself able to walk again on a floor. Near him, the other two scouts were getting to their feet, yells subsiding into painful, sobbing breaths; while over their heads, the rope, of which they were at last gratefully free, was being pulled back into the heights, its color no longer bright but a dirty greenish gray. A large proportion of the expedition was already standing all around him, and the rest arrived in the next few moments as rope after rope was lowered into the transparent box, discharged its prisoners, went limp and was pulled away.
Boxes? Transparent boxes? Eric stared down intently. Through the bottom, he saw layer after layer of intersecting rods under his feet. Every once in a while, at the junction of a set of rods there would be a large box, such as the one he was in. Some of the boxes contained humans; others were empty.
Walter met his eyes when he looked up. "Sure," the Weapon-Seeker said with a grimace. "Those shiny boxes with shadows in them. The shadows were men. The boxes are cages." He cursed. "Walter the Weapon-Seeker, they call me. And this big, new weapon I was going to get from the Monsters turns out to be—We got it all right. We got it good."
The other men had been listening. Manny the Manufacturer came up, holding a forefinger in the air. He looked right past them, his old, wrinkled face heavy with thought. "Cages," he muttered. "There was a legend about these things in the old religion—in the Ancestor-Science we used to believe in. What was it? Something about what happened to people who fooled around with Alien-Science, who had too much to do with the Monsters—Let me remember—"
They waited while he shook the forefinger slowly at his mind. "Cages. Yes. Once, when I was a boy, I heard these things described in terms of Ancestor-Science. The Cages of Sin. That was it—the Cages of Sin! And there was a line about them that went like this: The Cages of Sin is death."
"Are death, you mean," someone corrected. "The Cages of Sin are death."
"That's not the way the line went," Manny insisted. "Not the way I heard it. It went: The Cages of Sin is death. Just like that."
A chilled silence followed. After a while, a man dropped to his knees and began muttering an Ancestor-Science litany used by his own people. Another man from the same tribe knelt beside him and joined in. The chant filled the cage, awoke guilty memories in all of them.
O ancestors, O ancestors, I have failed and I have forgotten. Forgive me. I have failed to hit back at the Monsters in the ways you taught. Forgive me. I have forgotten to follow your ways. Forgive me, forgive me...
Eric shook himself out of the hypnosis of misery the words induced. Give in to this sort of thing and they'd be worth nothing. The whole bunch of them would be so much sewerage.
He still burned with shame when he thought of how the mass panic had swept him up a short while ago. That was no way for an Eye to act—and he was an Eye. An Eye should observe and record, no matter how fearfully unusual the circumstances, even if death seemed imminent. Wherever and however he found himself, an Eye must store impressions for future use: he must act like an Eye.
This cage, now—He walked away from the group surrounding the kneeling men. Roy the Runner and Walter the Weapon-Seeker gave him a startled glance, then fell in behind him. They passed Arthur the Organizer, sitting on the floor, his head in his hands. "Forgive me," Arthur was intoning. "Forgive me, forgive me.
.."
Less than ten paces by twelve paces, those were the dimensions of the cage. Not very much room for so many men—they were pretty crowded. The Monsters would probably make some provision for feeding them: there was no point in taking them alive if they weren't intended to be fed. But there would be the problem of garbage and body waste. Eric studied the floor and saw how it sloped to one corner of the cage where there was a rod junction. A hole in that corner went down into a rod: evidently the rod was hollow. But a very small, single hole for such a large number of men—how did the Monsters propose to keep the cage from becoming foul?
Eric put the problem aside temporarily and walked to one of the four perpendicular walls, Walter and Roy still following him and trying to read the reactions on his face. The wall was transparent and solid: Eric made sure of that by thumping it with his knuckles and trying to scratch it with a spear point. He threw back his head, estimating the distance to the top. About three and a half men high, with a lip that curved in and down for about an arm's length. Still—
"We could get four husky men to stand side by side against it," he suggested to Walter. "Three men standing on their shoulders, two men on theirs. A pyramid. Then a man could scramble up their bodies and pull himself over the lip."
The Weapon-Seeker considered. "He might. But four and three and two—that would leave nine men behind in the cage. Who'd volunteer to be left behind?"
"That's not your problem," said a weak voice behind them. "Your problem is what you do when you get out of here."
They turned. There was an odd-looking man lying on the floor in the midst of the woebegone expedition. He didn't appear to be a Stranger, Eric decided, and he certainly wasn't a member of Mankind. While his hair was tied in the back of his head Stranger-fashion, he was dressed in some ridiculous garment that was not a loincloth and certainly not loin straps—a short leather skirt with pockets all around its circumference. From several pockets, unfamiliar articles protruded.
And he was badly hurt. The upper part of his face and the whole right side of his body showed wide, dark bruises; his right arm and leg were limp and apparently broken.
"Were you already in the cage when they dropped us in?" Eric asked.
"I was. But you people had too many troubles of your own to notice me." He groaned and shut his eyes before going on. "You see, if you get out of here, you've nowhere to go. The walls of the cage are as smooth outside as inside—you'd just drop to the main floor, a full Monster-height below. And even if you made it to one of the rods—what good would that do? No handholds, nothing to grip anywhere along their length. Now, what I've been lying here wondering is this: could you pool your hair straps and your loin straps, braid them into a rope—"
"We could!" Walter broke in excitedly. "I know how, and there are other men here who—"
"But then I dismissed that idea, too. At most, you'd get a rope that only one or two men could use and would have to take with them from rod to rod. You're dealing with fantastic heights, remember. And from what I know of the quality of the leather you people turn out—no, it would just be another way to get killed." He paused, thought a bit. "Although, maybe not a bad way. Not a bad way to get killed at all."
The three of them soaked that in, shuddered. "Speaking of people," the Weapon-Seeker said in a low voice. "What are yours?"
"My tribe, you mean? That's my business. Now—kindly go away. I'm—I'm afraid I'm going to suffer a bit."
Roy the Runner grunted angrily. "We'll go away. Be glad to. Get in touch with us when you learn some manners and friendliness."
He walked off. The Weapon-Seeker scratched his head, looked at Eric, shrugged. He caught up to the Runner.
Eric squatted next to the wounded man. "Can I help you in any way?" he asked. "Could you use some water?"
The man licked his lips. "Water? How would you get water up here when it's not feeding time? Oh, I forgot. You warrior types, you carry canteens around with you. Yes, I'd very much appreciate some water."
Unslinging his canteen, Eric brought it to the man's mouth. The fellow certainly was no warrior—he seemed to know nothing of drinking discipline while on expedition. He would have finished the whole canteen, if Eric, conscious always of what must be set aside for an emergency, had not gently pulled it back and stoppered it.
"Thanks," the man sighed. "I've been taking pills for the pain, but I haven't been able to do anything about thirst. Thank you very much." He looked up. "My name's Jonathan Danielson."
"Mine's Eric. Eric the Eye."
"Hello, Eric. You're from—" a pause, as a twinge of pain arched through the prone body, "—from a front-burrow people, aren't you?"
"Yes, my tribe calls itself Mankind. The only one that's left from it, who's still with me, is that tall fellow, Roy the Runner. The one who got mad at you."
"The only one that's left—" the man seemed to be talking to himself. "I'm the only one left. Fourteen of us, and they got every one. Just one kick from a Monster. Broken bodies all over the place. I was lucky: the foot barely touched me. Smashed my ribs—internal hemorrhages—I don't think anyone else got off so lightly."
When his voice trailed off, Eric asked hesitantly: "Is that what we can expect? Is that what the Monsters will do to us?"
Jonathan Danielson jerked his head impatiently, then winced as the movement hurt him. "Uhh! No, of course not. All of that happened when I was captured. Anything as crude as a kick—that's the last thing the Monsters are likely to do to you here. You know where you are, don't you?"
"This cage, you mean?"
"This place. This place where all these cages are. It's a Pest Control Center."
"Pest? Control Center?"
The battered face grinned up at him sourly. "You and me. Humans, generally. We're pests as far as the Monsters are concerned. We steal their food, we upset them, we infest their houses. They'd like to get rid of us. This is a place where they do research on ways and means to get rid of us. It's a laboratory where they test all kinds of homicides: sprays, traps, poisoned lures, everything. But they need laboratory animals for the tests. That's what we are, laboratory animals."
Later, Eric made his way back thoughtfully to the center of the cage, where Roy and Walter sat dispiritedly with their arms about their knees.
"People are getting tired, Eric," the Runner said. "They've had a hard day, a real bad day. They'd like to go to sleep. But Arthur just sits there mumbling his prayers. He won't talk to anyone."
Eric nodded. He cupped his hands at his mouth. "Listen, everybody!" he called. "You can go to sleep. I hereby declare it night!"
"Do you hear that?" Roy sang out beside him. "Our leader has declared it night. Everybody go to sleep!"
All over the cage, men began stretching out gratefully on the floor. "Thanks, Eric. Good night. Good night, Eric."
He pointed to Walter and Roy. "You'll be sentries on the first watch. Pick any two men you trust to relieve you. And give orders to wake me if anything out of the ordinary happens."
When they had taken their posts at opposite walls of the cage, he lay down himself and put his arms behind his head. He had a lot to think about, and it was hard to fall asleep.
Pest Control Center...
Laboratory animals...
Where they test all kinds of homicides...
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
There was no need to declare it morning. They were awakened by breakfast, quantities of food being dropped into their cage out of a long transparent tube held over the edge by a Monster. Some of the food was familiar to those of them who had seen it freshly stolen from a Monster larder; some of it was new and disquietingly different; but all of it was edible.
After a great pile of the variously colored lumps had rained into their midst, the tube was withdrawn and they saw it inserted in other cages of the rod structure. Shortly after they had finished eating, the Monster brought the tube back and hung it over one corner. Water poured out of it now, so that the men could drink, but it also poured
down the sloping floor to the hole in the opposite corner, washing away all leftovers and whatever waste matter had accumulated during the night.
Simple enough, Eric thought. So much for sanitation.
There was a dense crowd pushing and shouldering around the stream of water—he'd have to organize them better the next time. Meanwhile, it would compromise a leader's dignity to join their scramble. He gave his canteen to Roy, telling the Runner to fill it and also see that the wounded man had plenty to drink.
When the Runner looked doubtful, he said simply and definitely: "That's an order, Roy," and turned away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Runner trot off immediately and follow his instructions. Eric felt relieved—after a night's sleep and the general recovery of nerve, he'd been afraid that his position might be questioned.
The important thing, he decided, was to give the men plenty to do. It would keep them from worrying and would at the same time emphasize his new status as leader.
Arthur, his predecessor in command, was a good place to start.
The water from the tube abruptly died to a trickle and the tube itself was pulled away from the lip at the top of the cage. Several of the men who hadn't managed to fill their canteens protested loudly, but the Monster, its pink tentacles holding the dripping tube firmly near its spearpoint-shaped head, walked off about its business.
The Organizer brought his canteen down after a long swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. Eric crossed to him, conscious that most of the expedition was watching.
"We have a problem in organization here, Arthur," he said. "Something for you to handle. We can't have all the men jostling in a bunch, each man trying to fill his own canteen. That way there'll always be somebody doing without. Think you could work out a better system?"
Arthur was apparently quite content to have given up the function of command decision in favor of the second-level administration planning which he knew so well. He smiled affirmatively. "Yes. I've been thinking about it. I don't see why we couldn't—"
