Furtig remained unconvinced. “Not until I have proven it for myself,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Prove it then!” Foskatt retorted.
“How can I? If I trail through Gammage again,” Furtig pointed out, “then I am doing no more than our people have always been able to do.”
“Not all our people. You know that well. It is a talent which varies.”
“But it is not uncommon. I could fasten on you, on Gammage—and it would not be extraordinary. You found my sensing strange because I used the Ancestor when I had never seen him.”
Foskatt limped a little as he strode back and forth, as if his wound plagued him somewhat. Now he sat down on the bed place.
“Let me tell Gammage, or better still, tell him yourself. Then perhaps he can see a way to test this—“
“I will think about it.” Furtig held stubbornly to his own will. He was interested by all Foskatt had told him, impressed by the other’s belief in the Ancestor and what he was doing here. But he wanted a chance to prove to himself that he need not fear the scorn of the Inborn before making a bold claim.
“Did you know really what you sought when you fell into the Ratton trap?”
“A secret place holding learning tapes—but this, Gammage thought, was larger than most by the reference to it which he had discovered. He wanted to find more dealing with the skyward-call. We had avoided that section, for twice we lost warriors to the protective devices of the Demons. Only at this new hint of the store place Gammage asked for volunteers, and I said I would go. For we of the caves have keener senses to detect what may lie in wait in places of danger. I was passing through what we thought a safe section when I was entrapped.”
Foskatt seemed convinced that the cave-born had certain advantages over the Inborn. Or did he cling to that thought because he, too, smarted from the superior airs of the In-born? Was he convinced, or had he convinced himself? It did not matter; Furtig was not going to put himself on trial until he could prove that he had something to offer. Though it seemed that Foskatt’s story contained a clue as to how he might do so.
“How close were you to this place you hunted when the Rattons took you?”
“Some distance. I was taking a circle trail because I was not sure of Demon traps. Part of the first ways fell in with a loud noise when I tried to reach the signal.”
“Closing off that section of the passage?”
“No, only the main trail. Look—“
From his belt pouch Foskatt brought out a slender stick. Its point, drawn along the floor, left a black line easy to see. With quick marks and explanations, he began to show Furtig the sweep of the underground ways. Though Furtig had never seen such a way of displaying a trail before, he grasped the advantages of this and commented on them.
“But this writing stick is nothing! Wait until you see—no, better—come and see!”
He put the stick away, scrambled up, and made for the door. Furtig, drawn along by his enthusiasm, followed Foskatt to his quarters.
Those were indeed different from the bare room in which Furtig had made his home since coming to the lairs. Here were two tables, their tops well burdened by masses of things Furtig was unable to sort out in the single glance or two he had time for before Foskatt drew him to the bed place, pushed him down to sit, and caught up a small box.
This was about as large as his two fists set together, and he pointed it at the wall. As with learning devices there appeared a picture there, but this was a series of lines only. However, after a long moment of study Furtig began to recognize a resemblance between them and the ones Foskatt had drawn.
Foskatt wedged the box steady beside Furtig on the bed and then went to stand by the picture, thrusting his hand into it as he explained.
“We are here now!” An emphatic scrape of claw on the wall distorted the picture. Beginning so, he launched into a description of this corridor and that, up and down.
“If you have such as this,” Furtig asked when he was done, “why do you need to search out these new trails in person?”
“Because these”—Foskatt came back and gave the box a tap and the picture disappeared—“are limited in what they show—each one portrays only a small section of the lairs. And if you cannot find the right box you have no guide.”
“All this—“ Furtig.pointed to the mass of things on the tables. “What have you here?”
“Many things of worth for a scout. See, with this, one can carry food which is hot, and later open it and find the food still hot.”
He turned a thick rod around in his hands. It split in two neatly.
“Food hot? But why should food be hot?”
“Wait and see!”
Foskatt put down the two pieces of rod and went to another box, much larger than that which had given the wall pictures. He took up a bowl in which Furtig could see a strip of meat, scooped the meat out, placed it within a mouth opening on the box, and snapped the opening shut.
Within seconds Furtig sniffed such an odor as he had never smelled before. It was enticing and his mouth watered. Before he knew it he had given one of the small mews a youngling utters when he sees a filled food bowl. And, startled, he was ashamed.
Foskatt might hot have heard. He opened once more the mouth of the box. The meat he took out was now brown and the odor from it was such that Furtig had to force himself to sit quietly until his tribesman offered it to him. It tasted as it looked, different from any meat he had ever mouthed, but very good.
“It is cooked,” Foskatt said. “The Demons did so to all their food. When it is so treated and put into carrying things such as these”—he picked up the rod again—“then it does not turn bad for a long time.
One can carry it and find it as hot as when it came from the cooker. Then there is this—“ He picked up a band which went around his middle like a belt. It had been rather clumsily altered to fit Foskatt, and at the front was a round thing which, at his touch, blazed with light.
“This can be worn in a dark place to make light.”
There seemed to be no end to Foskatt’s store of Demon-made treasures. There were slender, pointed rods one could use for a multitude of purposes. Some-thing he called a knife—like a single straight claw mounted on a stick—which cut cleanly.
In fact Furtig was shown so many different devices so hurriedly that he lost count, and it all became just a whirling mass of strange but highly intriguing objects.
“Where got you all these?”
“When I go seeking new trails I bring back things small enough to carry. Sometimes I can see their use at once. Other times I turn them over to others for study. Now here—“
Another box. This time at his touch no picture appeared on the wall, but a portion of its lid rolled back and within—!
Furtig did not muffle his hiss of astonishment.
It was as if he were very tall, taller than the lairs, and stood looking down into a part of the country near the caves. Animals moved there, he recognized deer. But they were not moving as the wall pictures moved, rather as if they lived as very tiny creatures within the box. Furtig put out a finger—there was an invisible cover, he could not touch.
“They are—alive?” He could not believe that this was so. Yet the illusion of reality was so great he still had doubts that such a thing could be if it were not real. “No, they do not live. And sometimes the picture changes and becomes— Watch!” Foskatt’s explanation ended in a sudden exclamation.
The world within the box was hidden in a gathering fog. Then that cleared and — Furtig began to shout:
“The caves! There is Fal-Kan and San-Lo. It is the caves!”
When Furtig glanced around Foskatt was not watching him, but staring at the cave scene as if he, too, found it astounding. Then Foskatt’s hand shot out, his fingers tightened about Furtig’s arm.
“Think,” was his order. “Think of some particular place—or person—and look at this while you do so!”
Just what he meant Furtig could not understand.
But when he heard the urgent tone in the other’s voice he did not mistake its importance. Obediently he looked at the box—though what he should “think” about momentarily baffled him.