“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. It was almost as bad as being a bastard—the child of a woman not fully accepted by the Female Society. 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 glow lantern bound to his forehead, the tiny 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 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 wouldn’t 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 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 forefathers. 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—”
“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 weren’t 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.”