“None except that I am of his blood kin in direct descent,” Furtig agreed. “I do not know how I was able to do this thing, but I did. Had I not, neither one of us would be standing here now.” He added to his tale the finding of the moving table, their arrival at the shaft, rising to the right level via that.
“Has Gammage heard this?” demanded Foskatt when he had done.
“No one has asked how we got here. They probably think you played guide.” For the first time Furtig realized this. He had been overwhelmed by the wonders of the lairs, yet no one had asked him questions in re-turn.
“But he must be told! Only a few of us can so depend upon hunting search.” Foskatt’s moving tail betrayed his excitement. “And never have I heard of a case wherein it could be used if the two involved were not close. This may mean that there are other changes in us, ones which are important.” He started for the door as if to hunt immediately for Gammage. Furtig moved to intercept him.
“Not yet. Not until we are sure.”
“Why not? Gammage must hear, must test—“
“No!” That was almost a warning growl. “In this place I am a youngling, fit only for lessoning with those still warm from their mothers’ nests. If I claim some talent I do not have, then I shall be rated even less. And that I will not have!”
“So once did I believe also,” Foskatt answered. “But all that matters is learning something to add to the knowledge of all.”
Now it was Furtig’s turn to stare, for it seemed Foskatt meant that. Of course a warrior stood ready to defend his home cave. But, except when pressed by battle, a warrior was concerned not with others but with himself, his pride. And to keep that pride, those who lost at the Trials wandered. If he had not done so himself, he would have been less than an untried youngling in the eyes of his own clan. Yet now Foskatt calmly said that he must risk the jeers of strangers for no good reason—for to Furtig the reason he offered was far from good.
“Do you think I was welcomed here, by any but Gammage?” Foskatt asked then. “To stand as a warrior in the lairs one must have something to give which others recognize as worthy of notice. And since the In-born have always had the advantage, that is difficult. It is a Trial in another fashion from our own.”
“How did you then impress them with your worth?”
“By doing what I was doing when the Rattons took me. It would seem that the gain of one kind of knowledge is sometimes balanced by the loss of another. How learned you the hunting lands of the caves, brother?”
“By running them, putting them in my mind so I could find them day or night.”
“Yes, we have a place here”—Foskatt tapped his forehead with one stub finger—“to store that knowledge. Having once traveled a path we do not mistake it again. But the Inborn, they do not possess so exact a sense of direction. If they go exploring they must mark that trail so that they will know it again. And with the Rattons invading, that is the last thing we want, trails to direct the enemy into our territory.
Therefore we who have not lost that inner sense of homing, we do the scouting. Look you, Furtig, do you not see that you have something more of benefit even than that which is common to all of us? If we can find out how you are able to fix upon one you have never seen, use him as a guide, then we shall be even more free to explore.”
“Free to face Rattons? You can trace them by the stink alone.”
“Rattans, no. Any one of us could spy upon Rattons. Nor does that duty need us going on two feet or four, or will soon. For the In-born have recently found another device of the Demons which moves through the air—though it has no wings. As it moves so it gathers pictures of what lies beneath it and sends those back to be viewed at a distance—“
“If Gammage has such a thing, why did he not use it to see you taken by the Rations and come to your aid?” Furtig interrupted. He had seen many marvels here, but the idea of a flying picture taker— Only, Foskatt was not making up a tale for younglings; it was plain he meant every word.
“For two reasons. First it has not been tested to the full. Second, it is again as with the other servants; these spy boxes fly only for a short space. Then they ground and there is nothing to be done to get them aloft again. Either the Demons had some way of in-fusing life into them at intervals, or they have grown too old to be trusted.
“But what I went to find was knowledge. You have seen the disks of tape which are fed into the learning machines. It is from these that Gammage and others have learned all they know about the machines and secrets of the Demons.
“However these disks are not stored in one place. We have found them here, there, in many places. Though why the Demons scattered them about so is a mystery. Gammage has a theory that all of one kind of learning was kept together, then the kinds separate. A little time ago he found what may be a guide to locate several different stores, but that was guessing. Much we learn here must be connected by guessing. Even when we hear the Demons’ words, we know only perhaps half of them. Others, even though many times repeated, we are not sure of. When we can add a new word, be sure of its meaning, it is a time of joy.
“It has long been Gammage’s hope that if we un-cover all the tapes, use them together, we can learn enough to run all the servants of the Demons without the failures that now make them unreliable. And with such servants, is there any limit to what we may do?”
“Some, perhaps,” Furtig said. “Did the Demons not think that once also? And they were limited in the end. Or so it seems.”
“Yes, there is that danger. Still—what if the Demons return, and we are again their playthings—as we were before? Do you wish that, brother?”
“Playthings?”
“So they have not shown you that tape yet?” Foskatt’s tail twitched. “Yes, brother, that we were—playthings of the Demons. Before the time when they began to use us in other ways—to learn from our torments of body what some of their discoveries would do to living creatures. Do you wish those days to return?”
“But this feeling Gammage has, that they will return—why is he so sure?”
“At the centermost point in the lairs there is a de-vice we cannot begin to understand. But it is sending forth a call. This goes to the skies. We have tried to destroy it, but it is safeguarded too well to let us near. And it has been going so since the last Demon died.
“We have discovered the records of those Demons who took to flight when the last days came. If they escaped the disease which finished their tribe here, then that device may call them back.”
So serious was Foskatt’s tone that Furtig’s ears flattened a little to his skull, his spine fur ridged. As Gammage had the power to enthrall when one listened to him, so did Foskatt now impress his companion with his conviction of this truth.
“But Gammage believes that if he has the Demons’ own knowledge he can withstand them?”
“It will be a better chance for us. Which would you choose to be in battle, a warrior with claws or without? For weapons support one at such times. Thus we seek all these stores of disks to learn and learn. It may be even the next one we find which will teach us how to keep the servants running. But, as I said, Gammage thought he had heard such a store place described, and I went to seek it. The Rations took me. They work with traps, brother, most cunningly. Since it was not known they were in that part of the lairs, I was taken. Nor can I hold my head high, for I was think-ing more of what I hunted than the territory I moved through. So I suffered from my own carelessness, and would have paid full price if you had not come.”
“But you would go again?”
“I will go again when I am needed. Now do you see, Furtig, what we have to offer here? We can be the seekers, using all the craft of the caves. And if it happens that you have something to better that seeking—“