Breed to Come (8 page)

That there was need for such a conveyance becameclear as they swept ahead. And things which astounded Furtig at first became commonplace as he sawother and more awesome ones succeed them.

Some,Liliha told him, they did not understand and hadfound no way to use—though teams of workers, specially trained by Gammage, and at intervals under hispersonal supervision, still tried to solve such problems.

But the learning machines, those Gammage hadearly activated. And the food for them was containedin narrow disks wound with tape. When Liliha fittedone of these into a box and pressed certain buttons, aseries of pictures appeared on the wall before them.

While out of the air came a voice speaking in astrange tongue. Furtig could not even reproduce mostof the sounds.

However, there was another thing, too large to wearcomfortably, which Furtig put on his head.

This hadsmall buttons to be fitted into the ears. When thatwas done, the words became plain, though some hadno meaning. One watched the pictures and listened tothe words and one learned. After a while, Furtig wastold, he would not need the translator but would beable to understand without it.

Furtig was excited as he had not been since he hadforced himself to face up to the Trials, knowing wellhe might lose. Only this time it was an excitement oftriumph and not of determination to meet defeat.Given time (now he could understand Gammage'spreoccupation with time in a way no cave dwellercould) one could learn all the Demons' secrets!

He would have liked to have lingered there. But thechamber was occupied by Gammage's people, one ofwhom Liliha had persuaded to allow Furtig to samplethe machine, and they were plainly impatient to getalong with their work. Perhaps they had allowed suchan interruption at all only because Furtig had beensent by Gammage.

For Furtig was not finding the warriors here friendly. They did not show the wary suspicion of strangetribesmen. No, this was more the impatience of anElder with a youngling—a none-too-bright youngling.Furtig found that attitude hard for his pride to swallow.

Most of these Workers displayed the same bodilydifferences—the slender hands, the lessening of bodyfur—as Liliha. But there were a few among them notdifferent, save in coloring, from himself, and theywere as impatient as their fellows.

Furtig tried to ignore the attitude of the workers,think only of what they were doing. But after a space,that, too, was sobering and disappointing. He, whowas a trained warrior, a hunter of some note, an accepted defender of the caves (a status which hadgiven him pride), was here a nothing. And the resultof his tour with Liliha was a depression and the half thought that he had much better return to his ownkind.

Until they reached Foskatt. They stood in an outerroom and looked through a wall (for it was the truththat here you could see through certain walls). Within was a pallet and on it lay the tribesman.

The lighting in the room differed from that whereFurtig stood with Liliha. Also it rippled just as windrippled field grass. Furtig could find no explanation ofwhat he saw there. There was light, and it moved inwaves washing back and forth across Foskatt.

The wounded warrior's eyes were closed. His chestrose and fell as if he slept, rested comfortably withoutpain or dreams. His wounded leg was no longerbloody, the fur matted with clots. A scar had begun toform over the slash.

Furtig, knowing how it might have gone had Foskatt lain so in the caves, how many died from lesserwounds in spite of the best tending their clans peoplecould give them, drew a long breath. It was but onemore of the wonders he had been shown, yet to him,because he could best appreciate the results, it wasone of the most awesome.

"This can be done for the coughing sickness?" heasked. He had set his two hands flat on the surface ofthat see-through wall; pushed so close even his nosetouched it.

"This can be done for any illness," Liliha told him,"as well as most hurts. There is only one it cannotcure so."

"That being?" A certain shading of her voice hadmade him turn his head to look at her. For the firsttime he could see uneasiness in her expression, the superiority gone.

"Gammage found a thing of the Demons. It spoutsa mist—and when that meets flesh—" She shuddered."It is the worst handwork of the Demons we haveseen. There is no halting what happens to one unfortunate enough to be caught in the mist." She shiveredagain. "It is not even to be thought upon!

Gammagehad it destroyed!"

"Ah, and what do you think now of the lairs. Furtig?"

Gammage stood behind them. His sudden appearances—how did the Ancestor manage thus to arrivewithout warning?

"They are full of marvels."

"Marvels upon marvels," the Ancestor agreed."And we have hardly touched the edge of what is stored here! Given time, just given time—" Oncemore he stared at the wall, as if his thoughts set abarrier between him and those he addressed.

"What I do not understand"—Furtig dared now tobreak in upon that withdrawal—"is why, when theDemons knew so much, they came to such an end."

Gammage looked at him, his gray frost-furred facealight.

"It was because they were greedy; they took andtook, from the air, the earth, the water. And whenthey realized that they had taken too much and triedto return it, they were too late. Some went—we cannot yet read their records well enough to know how orwhere. They seem to have flown into the sky—"

"Like birds? But they were not winged, were they?Those I have seen represented..."

"Just so," Gammage agreed briskly. "But we havegood evidence that they had some means of flight. So,a number of them flew away. Of those who were left—well, it seems that they worked very hard and fast tofind some way of restoring the land. One of their attempted remedies became instead their doom. Wehave found two records of that.

"What developed was an illness like our coughingsickness. Some it killed at once. Others—it alteredtheir minds so they became like those Barkers whofoam at the mouth and tear madly at their own kin.But with all it had one sure effect: They bore no moreyounglings.

"Also—" Gammage hesitated as if what he wouldsay now was an important thing, a wise utterance ofan Elder. "This sickness had another effect. For itmade us, the People, the Barkers, the Tusked Ones,even the Rattons, what we are.

"This is the thing we have learned, Furtig. We wereonce like the rabbits, the deer, the wild cattle we huntfor food. But we had some contact with the Demons.There is good evidence that some of us lived withthem here in the lairs, and that"—his voice grew deeper, closer to a warrior's growl—"that they usedus to try out their discoveries, so we were their servants to be used, killed, hurt, or maimed at their will.

"But it was because of this that we grew in ourminds—as the Demons dwindled and died. For theyforced on us their fatal sickness, trying to discoversome cure. But us it did not slay nor render sterile.

Instead, though our females had fewer younglings,those younglings were different, abler in ways.

"And the Demons, learning too late that they hadset those they considered lowly servants on a trailwhich would lead those servants to walk as theirequals, tried then to hunt them down and slay them, since they wished not that we should live when theydied. But many escaped from the lairs, and those wereour forefathers, and those of the Barkers, and theTusked Ones.

"The Rattons went underground, and because "theywere much smaller, even than they are today, theycould hide where the Demons could not find them.And they lived in the dark, waiting, breeding their warriors.

"The hunting of our people by the Demons was atime of great pain and terror and darkness. And it setin us a fear of the lairs, so great a fear that it kept ourpeople away, even when the last Demon met death.That was a disservice to us, for it cost us time. Andeven now, when I send to the tribes and tell them ofthe wonders waiting them here, few conquer theirfears and come."

"But if we learn the Demon's knowledge," askedFurtig slowly, "will not all their evil learning perhapsbe mixed with the good, so that in the end we will gothe same way?"

"Can we ever forget what happened to them? Lookabout you, Furtig. Is there forgetting here?

No, wecan accept the good, remembering always that wemust not say 'I am mightier than the world whichholds me, it is mine to be used as I please!' "

What Gammage said was exciting. But, Furtigwondered, would it awake the same excitement in, say, such an Elder as Fal-Kan? The People of thecaves, of the western tribe, were well content with life as it was. They had their customs, and a warrior didthis or that, spoke thus, even as his father before him.

A female became a Chooser and set up her own household, even as her mother. Ask them to break such patterns and be as these of Gammage's clan, who paidmore attention to learning the ways of Demons thanto custom? He could foresee a greater difficulty thanGammage could imagine in that. Look at what theElders now said of the Ancestor, in spite of his yearsof free giving, because he had tried to breach customin a few of their ways.

While he was with Gammage, listening to the Ancestor, inwardly marveling at the fact that it was because of the will and curiosity of this single memberof his own cave that the lairs had been invaded, that its secrets were being pried open, Furtig could believethat this Elder was right. Nothing mattered save thatthey learn, and learn in a race against time with someinvisible enemy who might at any moment arrive todo battle. And that the only weapons which would adequately protect them were those they still sought inthat time race.

However, Furtig's own part was not only insignificant but humiliating. For he, a seasoned warrior, must return to the status of youngling, studying withthose half his age, even less. For learning here did not go by seasons reckoned from one's birth, but ratherby the speed with which one absorbed lessons in the instruction rooms.

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

The air of superiority worn by the lair peoplechilled 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 somesection to which he had not been invited. None wereinterested in Furtig as an individual, but merely asanother 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 genuinelyenthralled. He was especially fascinated with theseries dealing with the latter days of the Demons—though why they had wished to leave such a sorryrecord, 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 withthe hunting down of his own people after they had not only proven to be able to withstand the diseasewiping out the Demons, but had benefited in some ways from it. The ferocity of the Demons was a redmadness, 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 himselfto see the younglings cowering away from him, staring as if the horrible madness of the Demons hadspread 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 onlyonce or twice did Gammage make one of his suddenappearances, ask a little vaguely if all were well, andgo again.

Furtig longed to ask questions, but there was noone who showed enough awareness of his presence toallow him to do so. What did they all do? Had anything at all been discovered to hold off any Demonswho might return? What and what and what—andsometimes who and who and who? Only there was noone he could approach.

Not until one day when he returned to his ownchamber, that in which he had first awakened and which apparently had been given to him (the lairswere 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 Furtigthought of the other now.

"You are healed?" He really did not need to askthat. There was only the faintest trace of a scar seam,hardly to be seen now, where mangled flesh had onceoozed blood.

"Well healed." Foskatt's upper lip wrinkled in awide grin. "Tell me, brother, how did you get me here? They say that we were found at the door of arise shaft. But I know from my own hunting in the ways below that we were far from that when we hadour 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 howdid you control it? I must have gone into darknessthen."

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

"A pity. He would have been a useful contact witha new tribe. But if you used the caller—how did you?Touch starts the servants, yes, but you would notknow 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 tostride up and down. "It is as I suspected—one touches, but it is not the touch alone as they havesaid, the pressure once, twice, and all the rest they would have us learn. It is the thought, which directsthose! For you have proved that. You knew no touch pattern, you merely thought of where you would liketo be—and it traveled for you!"

"Until it died," commented Furtig, "which it did."

"But if it died, how then did you have any guidethrough the ways?" Foskatt halted, stared at Furtig.