Demons' World

Chapter Thirteen

The soldiers’ Commander was down. He lay prostrate, pumping out his life blood, prone there on the dirt of a runnel beneath the world of buildings.

Was that, Stead wondered sickly, any way for a man to die?

Lights blazed confusedly before him. Like an apparition from the nether depths he saw Rogers all silhouetted against a burning truck, striking about him with his sword, smashing back a would-be victorious onslaught. Vance, too, and Car-don, leaped to stand with Rogers, sweeping away the soldiers of Trychos, then dropping flat into concealing darkness. Then the orange flicker of their guns took a further murderous toll.

“We’ll do it, boys, we’ll do it!” Old Purvis’s yell knifed clearly through the hubbub. Already the detonations of enemy explosives crashed less frequently; the bright winking of their guns faded to blackness in ever-growing patches. The men of Archon once again were routing the men of Trychos.

Thorburn was up on one knee, now, shooting with calm precision, hurling the last remnants of fleeing enemy soldiers back. Stead looked beyond him. Honey rose, her black hair shining almost green in the lurid lights, shooting with methodical directness. Julia crawled up, clasping a riddled leg, swearing vitriolically. Wallas was binding “up Sims’ wound.

And Old Chronic, cackling, was already slithering out, creeping like some underworld animal, across the churned up ground, out to strip the dead.

“Julia!” Thorburn leaped all asprawl to her, dropped to a knee, caught her to him. “Are you all right?”

“By a Scunner’s diseased left kidney!” Julia said, juicily. “Those Rang-bait, illegitimate, thrice-damned, eternally lost goons of Trychos put a bullet through my shapely leg!” She dragged her dull green Hunter’s slacks up around the shattered armor greave. Blood glistened Oilily. “If it leaves a scar I’ll… I’ll—”

“You’re all right, Julia,” said Thorbum, fervently. “Thank the immortal being!”

Stead laughed, nervously. His head ached. He had come through a traumatic experience; but there was no time to indulge in fancy psychological exhibitions; if he was to save himself he had to go on along the path he had chosen.

He stilled that silly, nervous, betraying laugh. He walked across in the lights being switched on as the men of Archon began to create order out of the aftermath of battle. Old Purvis was shouting his head off. Cardon, Honey, Vance, all the others of the group except Old Chronic, gathered around Thorbum and Julia. Near them Rogers and his group gathered in the smoky light. The soldiers were out searching for the men shouting out there, the wounded, only now able to call for help.

“Fighting other men,” Stead said bitterly. “Julia, Sims, wounded by men!” His face, smoke-blackened, gaunt, with deeply-sunk eyes rimmed in black, bloodshot, glared around on them. “You’re going to listen to me!”

Surprised, they watched him. Vance put up a hand. “You’re a criminal, Stead.”

“Only in the light of Regulations framed to prevent us from taking what is ours by right! I’m no criminal to any thinking Forager! And you all know it!”

Cardon pushed forward. His fiercely eager face, as vicious as a Rang’s, thrust out. “If you’re saying what we think, Stead—”

“I’m saying that it is time the Foragers told the world the truth! It is time we liberated mankind from the slavery, the thraldom, the parasiticism, that the Controllers have permitted for too long!”

And then, incredibly, Cardon was talking. His lean ferocious face glowed with an animation Stead had never seen it possess before. He spoke with vituperation of the Controllers. His words poured out, pure demogoguery, impelling, compelling, charging words with a new meaning, old-established facts with new, sharper life.

“Our brothers are spread wide!” he cried. “Through every firm of Foragers, in the ranks of the soldiers, of the workers— the brothers of the revolution merely await the call]” He pointed dramatically at Stead. “Look at him. He’s a new man, but he has become a comrade. He has been thrust down to toil with us in the Outside. He has broken a Regulation, well he may. And he will be condemned to a hideous death because he sought to save his life from a peril the Controllers never face, that they cannot believe to exist!”

Others had drifted up now, Rogers’ group, soldiers cleaning their weapons. .They clustered in the fitful light, a ring of tense faces, softly breathing, waiting for the spark that would set them alight.

“The Day has come, my brothers!” shouted Cardon. “Stead shot at a Demon. And how many others have done the same?” He stared around on them, dramatically pausing. Then, “Vance has, I’ll wager. And Manager Purvis. A lot of us. I have!”

No sound whispered from the packed ranks.

“The day has come when the masses shall arise in their wrath and their power! The day of the Controllers has ended! We—the Foragers, the soldiers, the workers—must take over the control! We must exercise the power we possess but are too disunited to use.” His voice sank. “Brothers, in our hands, lies the opportunity to arrange the world in a saner, more ordered, fairer fashion.” His voice soared, keening now with the thrusting, dark ambition of the man. “We must not hesitate! We must go on, march shoulder to shoulder against the tyranny of the Controllers, smash oppression, bring new hope and decent life to all men. To you and to me!”

They cheered then. Helmets rose into the air. Swords flashed. These men of the underworld, these men doomed to spend their lives in unending toil, fighting the horrible denizens of a hostile world unknown to the lordly Controllers— they cheered, these men, cheering themselves and their hopes, famishing for a chance to lead a better life.

But Stead stared on, appalled.

Was this what he had planned? This revolution?

“No,” said Stead, weakly through the noise. “No.”

Thorburn stared at him, licking his lips, uncertain.

“So that explains Cardon,” the Forager Leader said, softly. “That sin he always carried with him. He, too, shot at a Demon.”

“And it didn’t bring the results you predicted for Stead,” flashed Julia, finishing the bandages with her own fingers. “Cardon speaks good sense!”

“But… but can we do it?” whispered Thorburn.

“We’ll do it.” Julia stood up, grasping Thorburn, reaching out a hand to Stead. “We’ll make a better world for our kids, Thorburn! That’s what matters to me!”

After that the return to the temporary depot became an inferno of muddled noise and light, shouting and cheering, and an occasional shot. The temporary depot joined up to a man. The brothers of Cardon’s conspiracy had infiltrated everywhere; the acceptance of their lot that had so impressed and perplexed Stead lay revealed now as the quiescent, patient waiting of a volcano. Controller Forager Wilkins disappeared from the scene. Stead did not, then, have the courage to make too pertinent inquiries. Tiredness lapped over him, tiredness and a weary disillusion.

He was borne along on the heady wave of enthusiasm, dragged along with the masses, and thankful, inexpressibly thankful that he would not have to face a charge of shooting at a Demon.

But Demons really existed. He did not forget his vow to do all he could to take men out of their warrens and their runnels behind walls, bring them into the real world of the Outside that was rightfully theirs.

Countless meetings were held. Committees were elected. Thorburn and his entire group, with the significant exception of Old Chronic, were elected onto an action committee. Delegates went out to neighboring Forager H.Q. Soldiers drifted in, deserters welcomed with open arms and good food and wine.

For this area on the periphery of the warrens, Cardon, to his own surprise and then gratification, was elected Delegate Member Controller. He was not an ambitious man for himself. Cardon really believed in the message he preached.

And his prophet, to the absolute bewilderment of Stead, was B. G. Wills.

From that erudite and clear-thinking man, Cardon and his associates had gleaned a distorted view of the world and their part in it, and they had set about rectifying the faults. Through all their declamations, their points programs, a queer far-off echo of Wills rumbled down in muted logic but violent fury.

In all honesty, having seen what he had, Stead could not gainsay the right of these downtrodden people to a fair share in the good things of the world.

But he had wanted them to go out into the Outside, and take those goodnesses from the Demons, from the alien monstrosities who dominated the real world and under whose feet mankind was a mere irritating pest.

For the first time since those early days when he had first realized he was a man without a past, a man whose early life was a blank, a cipher figure, he longed desperately to know who and what he was. Perhaps, at this critical juncture in the history of the human race on Earth, he might be able to influence it along the right road if only he knew. And then he would groan inwardly at the stupid pretentiousness of a single impotent mote of humanity imagining it could change the destiny of mankind. Mankind’s destiny lay in the hands of every individual—Cardon preached that. And, manifestly, it was true. B. G. Wills had said that if society could be changed then man would change, too. Delia had said that. And now Cardon was arraigning the human race to answer the charge, was drawing up his legions to do battle for the good things of the world.

A gnawing longing to see Delia possessed him.

The ache grew. It blossomed one day of fiery speeches, of a small probing battle over against the blue lights of the barrier, of fresh heart and mind-searchings, into a consuming passion.

He must see Delia!

An unsuspected well of caution prevented him from telling anyone, even Thorburn, of his intentions.

In the seething tumult of those days, when everything seemed possible, when the old order was being changed, visibly altering before everyone’s eyes, Honey had thrown herself into organizing work with a gay abandon that masked her steely spirit. She believed in the future. Ash-amedly, watching her slender boyish figure, her pale set face, the little crease of dedication between her eyebrows, Stead drew back from contact with her. He didn’t know what Thorburn meant. The exploration of the hints and innuendos that had come his way, the mystification of that experience with Belle, his feelings about Delia, had been pushed into the back of his mind in the tumult of the revolution.

Simon would know. A Controller he might be, but he was a man of science. He understood the murky workings of the human brain. Science, it seemed to Stead now, offered the one last hope. If Forager and Controller met in head-on battle the death knell of the human race would be rung here in the dark crevices behind the real world. Stead couldn’t let that happen whilst still there remained a chance and science had not been consulted.

Cautiously, he made his preparations, stifling the guilt feelings that, irrational though he knew them to be, afflicted him with sharp pangs of doubt when he saw the animated purpose of his Forager comrades.

He learned that Forager Controller Wilkins had escaped, and Old Chronic was gone, too. The task of finding a Controller Officer’s uniform was not difficult; the dead man’s kit lay still neatly folded in his abandoned cubby. Stead picked up the smart blue and gold, the dress sword, the insignia, and stuffed them into a pack slung beneath his cape. He carried food and wine there, a map of the warrens found in Old Chronic’s deserted possessions. Then, not without a twinge of doubt and apprehension, he set off.

As a member of the action committee he bluffed his way past the blue light and the gas curtain and barrier with no difficulty. His heart beating heavily, he strode into the warrens.

Every street and level here was alive with workers, pouring randomly from their cubicles, talking, shouting, gesticulating, holding meetings, running; the whole place seethed with an aimless activity. Soon, Stead knew, the workers would be given their chance to join the revolution. As soon as the foodstuffs stored within the warrens gave out, the workers would join their Forager and Soldier comrades. That would leave the Controllers isolated. Isolated and starving.

He had need of his cape going swiftly through the lighted runnels. The cape’s chromatophores went through their pigmentation arrangements, changing color, concealing him against concrete walls and dirty shadowed alcoves, giving him the chance to penetrate deeply into the warrens. As he left the workers’ areas the quality of the panic changed, grew deeper, tolled with a more resonant fear in the faces and bearing of the people he passed.

Here, the Controllers gathered to talk in whispers, to fidget, to wonder what the Captain and his Crew were doing.

Stead passed through the familiar ways, found Simon’s laboratory, and dressed in the reassuring blue and gold, the proud insignia of Archon blazing on his breast, went up the steps and through the oval door. Soon, now, he would see Delia. But anticipation of that could not live with his burning desire to tell these heedless people the truth, to secure their help in the business of routing out the Demons. The revolt appeared small and petty beside that great aspiration.

Lieutenant Cargill stepped from a doorway into the corridor. He looked grim and haggard, but his face still contained that youthful iron, that awareness that the future of Archon rested on his shoulders. He saw the Commander, resplendent in blue and gold, bulky in armor, camouflage cape swirling, weapons aglitter, and he saluted.

Mechanically returning the salute, Stead went to brush past.

Cargill raised his eyes. He saw the grim, lined, tough face scored with the marks of bitter experience, the crinkles around I lie eyes, the thin wide lips clamped now into a line of determination, the jutting chin.

Then comprehension flowed in shocking understanding through him.

“You… you’re Stead! But what— And in a soldier’s uniform, an officer’s… a Commander’s! What does this mean, Stead? Quick, now!”

Cargill’s hand gun snouted up.

Stead brushed it aside, pushing the muzzle to point to the floor. “Where’s Delia? Where’s Simon? I must see them, immediately! Come on, man—where are they?”

The very vehemence of Stead perturbed Cargill, threw him off balance. He hesitated.

“You may come too. You could be useful. Hurry, Car-gill. There is little time. Where is Delia?”

“Who’s calling?” The sound of the opening door clicked loudly. “Cargill?”

Delia walked towards them, pale and drawn, her eyes slowly widening as she saw Stead. One hand flew to her mouth. “Stead! What do you want here? What’s happened?”