“If there are beasts below this floor, in the sewers, then they have little chance of escaping, anyway,” the General said.
“Except for their — power,” Belmondo said.
The General grunted, thought on it a moment more, then dispatched four armed men into the storm drain, two teams to cover either direction the fugitives might have gone. The other soldiers went outside at his heels, prepared to take up other positions throughout the village in order instantly to apprehend the espers, wherever they might appear.
To this end the Pures had the complete cooperation of the tainted, a rare event indeed.
The fog was gradually lifting. A large, red sun burned down on the strange landscape, a single frightful eye anxious for the spectacle of battle.
4
The huge storm drains that lay beneath the tainted community, made of stone and mortar and slimed with thick coats of moss and fungus, were the apotheosis of everything that a Pure most feared: unrelieved darkness on all sides, stench, dampness, the unknown, the presence of things whose genetic backgrounds were radically damaged and unclean. In the enclave on the white cliff — or, indeed, in any enclave scattered across the continent — the walls, ceilings and floors were all of the same, smooth alabaster substance, hard as any material known to man, serf-cleaning and unflawed. Too, everywhere in an enclave, except where one slept, there was light, an abundance of light which played an unconsciously symbolic role in the minds of the Pures, who endured it and reveled in it. An enclave was almost painfully clean — unlike these underground passageways — kept spotless by its self-repairing maintenance systems; no unpleasant odors permeated the corridors or rooms of a Pure dwelling. Everything in an enclave was known, too, familiar and safe, with more of a history than most of the Pure families could claim for themselves. And, of course, no enclave harbored genetically damaged beasts, species of a blasphemous nature; those were quickly dispatched with when, rarely, they became known. Here, perverted life crawled beneath the moss, fed off the fungus, clung to the ceiling, skittered silently away from them as they advanced — and the bruin, the worst of all the tainteds here, was leading him deeper into this place of shadows.
Jask was certain that each step would be his last, that at any moment, he would no longer have the nerve to advance. He would either freeze where he was, his muscles knotted, nerve ends frayed apart — or he would turn and bolt, try to regain the cellar of the inn and, there, throw himself on the mercy of the General and of his own kind. Yet, step by step, he did go on, his whole body stiff with tension, his heart thudding like a mallet against a block of wood. He wondered where he got the strength to take each additional step.
From fear.
What? Jask was startled by the thought pressing at him.
From fear, the bruin repeated. There's no use wishing the fear would be gone, because it's the fear that keeps you going.
“Let's talk aloud,” Jask said.
“Your reason?”
Jask said nothing. He did not want to use telepathy because, in employing it, he was making an admission of his own status as a tainted, something he had accepted intellectually but had not learned to deal with on an emotional level.
“Aloud, then,” the bruin said, apparently having properly read the confusion of thoughts that even Jask was unable to sort out yet.
“How can you see where you're going?” Jask asked. His feet slipped on a wet patch of cobblestones even as he spoke. He reached out, flailing for a handhold, felt his fingers touch a slimy growth on the tunnel wall, jerked back, slipped again and fell. His face struck a puddle of dank water, the odor of which served to propel him swiftly to his feet; he brushed ineffectually at his cheeks and nose with one cold hand.
“I suppose that it's simply that my eyes are so much better than yours,” the bruin said. The creature had not paused to wait for Jask to wipe his face and recover his dignity; the sounds of his heavy footsteps grew increasingly distant as Jask sputtered to rid his mouth of the foul taste of sewerage.
The Pure, terrified of being left behind, alone, hurried forward without regard for the treacherous floor, his hands held out before him like a blind man seeking obstacles. He collided with the bruin, jerked away from the feel of matted fur, breathing heavily and falling into step once again. He thought that he heard the creature chuckle, but he could not be sure, because he was making so much noise himself.
They walked on.
A few moments later, composed again, Jask said, “What you said about your eyes—”
“Yes?”
“That can't be right.”
“Can't it?” the bruin asked. If he did not chuckle aloud, the humor was implicit in the tone of his voice. He said, “What was it that I said?”
“That your eyes were much better than mine. But I'm a Pure, and you're a tainted, and no eyes can be more efficient than what Nature, in Her Great Plan, originally intended for the Chosen Species to—”
“I was formed in an Artificial Womb, or at least my ancestors came directly from the altered genes of someone who was. That first bearlike ancestor of mine was made by genetic engineers, which means he was not only the exotic and decorative child his parents wanted and paid for, but had been improved by the engineers wherever possible.”
Jask rejected that notion without commenting on it.
“Aren't I stronger than you, little man?” the bruin asked.
“That means nothing.”
“If I'm stronger, what's to keep me from having better eyesight? Clearly, my muscles are better than yours. Why not my eyes as well?”
“The very fact that you are gargantuanly muscled is evidence of your inferiority in comparison with Pure men. A true man can create machines to do the work his muscles once did. A true man can create weapons to destroy enemies a hundred times his size, weight and strength. Muscles are the sign of a throwback, indicating genetic damage.”
“Muscles are worthless, then?”
“Yes.”
“But don't you wish you had them now?”
Jask said nothing.
“And don't you wish you had my eyesight — even if it is no better than yours? I seem to find my way well enough. And here, be careful now. We're making a turn into a side tunnel.”
Jask felt his way around the twist in the stone and had to step up his pace to catch the bruin again, since the tainted man had not slowed down for him. He said, “A Pure must never place himself in a position—”
“To hell with that,” the creature said, not nastily, just wearily. “I don't want to hear any more of your evangelism. You forget, anyway, that you're no longer a Pure, yourself.”
Jask felt tears burning at the corners of his eyes and quietly cursed himself for his emotional weakness. He was relieved that the bruin could not see this final evidence of his moral decay, this ultimate, very unmanly weakness.
They walked for another three minutes, without speaking, listening to the brackish water splash under their feet.
Then the bruin thought to him: It's not unmanly.
What do you mean?
Tears, crying.
Jask realized, bitterly, that with a telepath he had no real privacy unless the creature was gracious enough to grant it to him.
Men cry, the bruin said. Men have always cried. If your holy Lady Nature gave you tear ducts, what else are they for?
Keeping the eye clean.
The bruin said, I hadn't realized the Pures practiced a machismo sort of—
“Please cease speaking to me that way,” Jask said. “I won't have a tainted in my mind like that. It makes me ill.”
The bruin did not respond, and the attitude he took seemed to mean he had been hurt by the rebuff.