Mankind consisted of 128 people.
The sheer population pressure of so vast a horde had long ago filled over a dozen burrows. Bands of the Male Society occupied the outermost four of these interconnected corridors and patrolled it with their full strength, twenty-three young adult males in the prime of courage and alertness. They were stationed there to take the first shock of any danger to Mankind, they and their band captains and the youthful initiates who served them.
Eric the Only was an initiate in this powerful force. Today, he was a student warrior, a fetcher and a carrier for proven, seasoned men. But tomorrow, tomorrow....
This was his birthday. Tomorrow, he would be sent forth to Steal for Mankind. When he returned—and have no fear: Eric was swift, Eric was clever, he would return—off might go the loose loin cloths of boyhood to be replaced by the tight loin straps of a proud Male Society warrior.
He would be free to raise his voice and express his opinions in the Councils of Mankind. He could stare at the women whenever he liked, for as long as he liked, to approach them even—
He found himself wandering to the end of his band’s burrow, still carrying the spear he was sharpening for his uncle. There, where a women’s burrow began, several members of the Female Society were preparing food stolen from the Monster larder that very day. Each spell had to be performed properly, each incantation said just right, or it would not be fit to eat. It might even be dangerous. Mankind was indeed fortunate: plenty of food, readily available, and women who well understood the magical work of preparing it for human consumption.
And such women—such splendid creatures!
Sarah the Sickness-Healer, for example, with her incredible knowledge of what food was fit and what was unfit, her only garment a cloud of hair that alternately screened and revealed her hips and breasts, the largest in all Mankind. There was a woman for you! Over five litters she had had, two of them of maximum size.
Eric watched as she turned a yellow chunk of food around and around under the glow lamp hanging from the ceiling of the burrow, looking for she only knew what and recognizing it when she found it she only knew how. A man could really strut with such a mate.
But she was the wife of a band leader and far, far beyond him. Her daughter, though, Selma the Soft-Skinned, would probably be flattered by his attentions. She still wore her hair in a heavy bun: it would be at least a year before the Female Society would consider her an initiate and allow her to drape it about her nakedness. No, far too young and unimportant for a man on the very verge of warrior status.
Another girl caught his eye. She had been observing him for some time and smiling behind her lashes, behind her demurely set mouth. Harriet the History-Teller, the oldest daughter of Rita the Record-Keeper, who would one day succeed to her mother’s office. Now there was a lovely, slender girl, her hair completely unwound in testament to full womanhood and recognized professional status.
Eric had caught these covert, barely stated smiles from her before; especially in the last few weeks, as the time for his Theft approached. He knew that if he were successful—and he had to be successful: don’t dare think of anything but success!—she would look with favor on advances from him. Of course, Harriet was a redhead, and therefore, according to Mankind’s traditions, unlucky. She was probably having a hard time finding a mate. But his own mother had been a redhead.
Yes, and his mother had been very unlucky indeed.
Even his father had been infected with her terrible bad luck. Still, Harriet the History-Teller was an important person in the tribe for one her age. Good-looking too. And, above all, she didn’t turn away from him. She smiled at him, openly now. He smiled back.
“Look at Eric!” he heard someone call out behind him. “He’s already searching for a mate. Hey, Eric! You’ve not even wearing straps yet. First comes the stealing. Then comes the mating.”
Eric spun around, bits of fantasy still stuck to his lips.
The group of young men lounging against the wall of his band’s burrow were tossing laughter back and forth between them. They were all adults: they had all made their Theft. Socially, they were still his superiors. His only recourse was cold dignity.
“I know that,” he began. “There is no mating until—”
“Until never for some people,” one of the young men broke in. He rattled his spear in his hand, carelessly, proudly. “After you steal, you still have to convince a woman that you’re a man. And some men have to do an awful lot of convincing. An awful lot, Eric-O.”
The ball of laughter bounced back and forth again, heavier than before. Eric the Only felt his face turn bright red. How dare they remind him of his birth? On this day of all days? Here he was about to prepare himself to go forth and Steal for Mankind....
He dropped the sharpening stone into his pouch and slid his right hand back along his uncle’s spear. “At least,” he said, slowly and definitely, “at least, my woman will stay convinced, Roy the Runner. She won’t be always open to offers from every other man in the tribe.”
“You lousy little throwback!” Roy the Runner yelled. He leaped away from the rest of the band and into a crouch facing Eric, his spear tense in one hand. “You’re asking for a hole in the belly! My woman’s had two litters off me, two big litters. What would you have given her, you dirty singleton?”
“She’s had two litters, but not off you,” Eric the Only spat, holding his spear out in the guard position. “If you’re the father, then the chief’s blonde hair is contagious—like measles.”
Roy bellowed and jabbed his spear forward. Eric parried it and lunged in his turn. He missed as his opponent leaped to one side. They circled each other, cursing and insulting, eyes only for the point of each other’s spears. The other young men had scrambled a distance down the burrow to get out of their way.
A powerful arm suddenly clamped Eric’s waist from behind and lifted him off his feet. He was kicked hard, so that he stumbled a half-dozen steps and fell. On his feet in a moment, the spear still in his hand, he whirled, ready to deal with this new opponent. He was mad enough to fight all Mankind.
But not Thomas the Trap-Smasher. No, not that mad.
All the tension drained out of him as he recognized the captain of his band. He couldn’t fight Thomas. His uncle. And the greatest of all men. Guiltily, he walked to the niche in the wall where the band’s weapons were stacked and slid his uncle’s spear into its appointed place.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Roy?” Thomas was asking behind him. “Fighting a duel with an initiate? Where’s your band spirit? That’s all we need these days, to be cut down from six effectives to five. Save your spear for Strangers, or—if you feel very brave—for Monsters. But don’t show a point in our band’s burrow if you know what’s good for you, hear me?”
“I wasn’t fighting a duel,” the Runner mumbled, sheathing his own spear. “The kid got above himself. I was punishing him.”
“You punish with the haft of the spear. And anyway, this is my band and I do the punishing around here. Now move on out, all of you, and get ready for the council. I’ll attend to the boy myself.”
They went off obediently without looking back. The Trap-Smasher’s band was famous for its discipline throughout the length and breadth of Mankind. A proud thing to be a member of it. But to be called a boy in front of the others! A boy, when he was full-grown and ready to begin stealing!
Although, come to think of it, he’d rather be called a boy than a singleton. A boy eventually became a man, but a singleton stayed a singleton forever. He put the problem to his uncle who was at the niche, inspecting the band’s reserve pile of spears.
“Isn’t it possible—I mean, it is possible, isn’t it—that my father had some children by another woman? You told me he was one of the best thieves we ever had.”
The captain of the band turned to study him, folding his arms across his chest so that biceps swelled into greatness and power. They glinted in the light of the tiny lantern bound to his forehead, the glow lantern that only fully accredited warriors might wear. After a while, the older man shook his head and said, very gently:
“Eric, Eric, forget about it, boy. He was all of those things and more. Your father was famous. Eric the Storeroom-Stormer, we called him, Eric the Laugher at Locks, Eric the Roistering Robber of all Mankind. He taught me everything I know. But he only married once. And if any other woman ever played around with him, she’s been careful to keep it a secret. Now dress up those spears. You’ve let them get all sloppy. Butts together, that’s the way, points up and even with each other.”
Dutifully, Eric rearranged the bundle of armament that was his responsibility. He turned to his uncle again, now examining the knapsacks and canteens that would be carried on the expedition. “Suppose there had been another woman. My father could have had two, three, even four litters by different women. Extra-large litters too. If we could prove something like that, I wouldn’t be a singleton any more. I would not be Eric the Only.”
The Trap-Smasher sighed and thought for a moment. Then he pulled the spear from his back sling and took Eric’s arm. He drew the youth along the burrow until they stood alone in the very center of it. He looked carefully at the exits at either end, making certain that they were completely alone before giving his reply in an unusually low, guarded voice.
“We’d never be able to prove anything like that. If you don’t want to be Eric the Only, if you want to be Eric the something-else, well then, it’s up to you. You have to make a good Theft. That’s what you should be thinking about all the time now—your Theft. Eric, which category are you going to announce?”
He hadn’t thought about it very much. “The usual one I guess. The one that’s picked for most initiations. First category.”
The older man brought his lips together, looking dissatisfied. “First category. Food. Well....”
Eric felt he understood. “You mean, for someone like me—an Only, who’s really got to make a name for himself—I ought to announce like a real warrior? I should say I’m going to steal in the second category—Articles Useful to Mankind. Is that what my father would have done?”
“Do you know what your father would have done?”
“No. What?” Eric demanded eagerly.
“He’d have elected the third category. That’s what I’d be announcing these days, if I were going through an initiation ceremony. That’s what I want you to announce.”
“Third category? Monster souvenirs? But no one’s elected the third category in I don’t know how many auld lang synes. Why should I do it?”
“Because this is more than just an initiation ceremony. It could be the beginning of a new life for all of us.”
Eric frowned. What could be more than an initiation ceremony and his attainment of full thieving manhood?
“There are things going on in Mankind, these days,” Thomas the Trap-Smasher continued in a strange, urgent voice. “Big things. And you’re going to be a part of them. This Theft of yours—if you handle it right, if you do what I tell you, it’s likely to blow the lid off everything the chief has been sitting on.”
“The chief?” Eric felt confused. He was walking up a strange burrow now without a glow lamp. “What’s the chief got to do with my Theft?”
His uncle examined both ends of the corridor again. “Eric, what’s the most important thing we, or you, or anyone, can do? What is our life all about? What are we here for?”
“That’s easy,” Eric chuckled. “That’s the easiest question there is. A child could answer it:
“Hit back at the Monsters,” he quoted. “Drive them from the planet, if we can. Regain Earth for Mankind, if we can. But above all, hit back at the Monsters. Make them suffer as they’ve made us suffer. Make them know we’re still here, we’re still fighting. Hit back at the Monsters.“
“Hit back at the Monsters. Right. Now how have we been doing that?”
Eric the Only stared at his uncle. That wasn’t the next question in the catechism. He must have heard incorrectly. His uncle couldn’t have made a mistake in such a basic ritual.
“We will do that,” he went on in the second reply, his voice sliding into the singsong of childhood lessons, “by regaining the science and knowhow of our fore-fathers. Man was once Lord of all Creation: his science and knowhow made him supreme. Science and knowhow is what we need to hit back at the Monsters.“
“Now, Eric,” his uncle asked gently. “Please tell me this. What in hell is knowhow?”
That was way off. They were a full corridor’s length from the normal progression of the catechism now.
“Knowhow is—knowhow is—” he stumbled over the unfamiliar verbal terrain. “Well, it’s what our ancestors knew. And what they did with it, I guess. Knowhow is what you need before you can make hydrogen bombs or economic warfare or guided missiles, any of those really big weapons like our ancestors had.”
“Did those weapons do them any good? Against the Monsters, I mean. Did they stop the Monsters?”
Eric looked completely blank for a moment, then brightened. Oh! He knew the way now. He knew how to get back to the catechism:
“The suddenness of the attack, the—”
“Stop it!” his uncle ordered. “Don’t give me any of that garbage! The suddenness of the attack, the treachery of the Monsters—does it sound like an explanation to you? Honestly? If our ancestors were really Lords of Creation and had such great weapons, would the Monsters have been able to conquer them? I’ve led my band on dozens of raids, and I know the value of a surprise attack; but believe me, boy, it’s only good for a flash charge and a quick getaway if you’re facing a superior force. You can knock somebody down when he doesn’t expect it. But if he really has more than you, he won’t stay down. Right?”
“I—I guess so. I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, I know. I know from plenty of battle experience. The thing to remember is that once our ancestors were knocked down, they stayed down. That means their science and knowhow were not so much in the first place. And that means—” here he turned his head and looked directly into Eric’s eyes—”that means the science of our ancestors wasn’t worth one good damn against the Monsters, and it wouldn’t be worth one good damn to us!”
Eric the Only turned pale. He knew heresy when he heard it.
His uncle patted him on the shoulder, drawing a deep breath as if he’d finally spat out something extremely unpleasant. He leaned closer, eyes glittering beneath the forehead glow lamp and his voice dropped to a fierce whisper.
“Eric. When I asked you how we’ve been hitting back at the Monsters, you told me what we ought to do. We haven’t been doing a single thing to bother them. We don’t know how to reconstruct the Ancestor-science, we don’t have the tools or weapons or knowhow—whatever that is—but they wouldn’t do us a bit of good even if we had them. Because they failed once. They failed completely and at their best. There’s just no point in trying to put them together again.”
And now Eric understood. He understood why his uncle had whispered, why there had been so much strain in this conversation. Bloodshed was involved here, bloodshed and death.
“Uncle Thomas,” he whispered, in a voice that kept cracking despite his efforts to keep it whole and steady, “how long have you been an Alien-Science man? When did you leave Ancestor-Science?”
Thomas the Trap-Smasher caressed his spear before he answered. He felt for it with a gentle, wandering arm, almost unconsciously, but both of them registered the fact that it was loose and ready. His tremendous body, nude except for the straps about his loins and the light spear-sling on his back, looked as if it were preparing to move instantaneously in any direction.
He stared again from one end of the burrow to the other, his forehead lamp reaching out to the branching darkness of the exits. Eric stared with him. No one was leaning tightly against a wall and listening.