Demons' World

Chapter Five

The going away party for Stead blossomed under the electrics.

The colorful personalities of off-watch Controllers flowered before his eyes; the bewildering variety of costume, the glitter of jewels, the laughing, painted faces, the noise of music, the rich streams of flowing wine spouting in bounty from ranked faucets into shell-shaped basins, the tables piled with cunningly made appetite-teasing dainties, the roaring clamor of voices and laughter, shrieks, greetings, snatches of song, the whole seething picture of gaiety struck him dizzily.

Banked electric heaters around the walls poured volumes of radiant warmth that progressively disrobed men and women alike. The People of Archon lived in a coldish world; they liked heat and Controllers could afford as much as they wanted.

A remarkable feeling assailed Stead, a sensation he had not previously experienced but one which in its essentials he recognized as being akin to the feeling that so troubled him in his dealings with Delia. The dictionary had defined that for him as embarrassment. But why should he feel embarrased when all these people had come to wish him well and say good-bye?

Prodded forward he allowed himself to be mounted upon a table, a drink to be thrust into his hand. Looking down he saw a flowerbed of flushed, upturned faces, eyes glinting, mouths smiling, teeth gleaming. Glasses were raised to him, a forest of white arms, reaching up.

A man shouted, high and powerfully, “Safe nook and cranny to Stead! Long life! And may he soon return home to the warren safely!” It was a toast.

They all drank. Drinking with them, not knowing any different, Stead felt again, strongly, how fine a class of people were the Controllers of Archon.

He jumped off the table and was immediately caught up in strange ritualistic dances, all gyrations and hand clappings and sinuous snaky lines; he tumbled around the hall, flushed and laughing and happy. This, indeed, was life, the full and free life promised him by Simon and Delia.

Cargill was not at the party.

A quick commotion took Stead’s attention. The dancing line fragmented into laughing, spinning individuals. Women screamed. Men rushed away from Stead, coalescing into a melee of pressing backs in a corner. Here the electric lights had been discreetly dimmed.

“Kill the beastly thing!” “There it goes!” “Ugh!” “What a filthy brute.” Cries and commotion filled the air. Peering over straining backs, Stead looked down, and saw the cause of the trouble.

Cowering beneath an upturned chair, a small animal peered out with large, frightened eyes. It was perhaps half the size of his shoe. Its sixteen legs moved erratically, not propelling the tiny, shrunken body in any settled direction, its four feelers waving in mocking parody of the human dancers’ gesticulating arms.

“What is it?” asked Stead.

“A filthy rat!” A woman, far enough away to be brave, caught Stead’s arm. “Kill it quick!”

“But why?” Stead felt puzzlement. The little rat didn’t seem to be doing much harm. He had read about them, of course, but the reactions of these people, especially the women, surprised him.

The rat made a sudden despairing dart for safety. It scuttled in a blurring of speed along the wall. A man threw a glass at it. Another threw a goblet. Then two men trapped it. Stead saw a foot rise, go down. He heard—quite distinctly—a squeak abruptly chopped off.

“Filthy things,” said Delia, pulling him away from the painted woman who had caught his arm. “They infest the workers’ cubicles, of course, but one seldom sees any as low as this.”

“Horrible,” quavered the woman, reluctantly releasing Stead. “They make me feel itchy.”

“I want you to meet an old friend,” said Delia. “Forget the rat. Even a Controller’s cubicle cannot be entirely free of animal pests.” Looking at her, feeling the pressure of her hand on his arm, Stead forgot the rat.

Delia brought him wheeling round to face an old, wise, pretematurally aged, white-whiskered countenance that beamed on him with profound joy.

“This is Stead, Nav,” Delia said. “Stead, you have the great privilege and honor to meet Astroman Nav.” She was obviously happy at this meeting. “Nav is very high in the hierarchy of the Astromen. I’m sure he will be able to help you a lot.” She pouted at Nav. “You will, won’t you, Nav, dear?”

Nav’s pouched old eyes twinkled in the electrics. He lifted the hem of the long garment he wore, sat down on a chair, politely indicating seats for Delia and Stead, one on each side. Stead could not fail to notice the odd instrument dangling at Nav’s waist, but he decided that good manners demanded no comment.

“If your grandfather had heard you talking to an Astro-man like that you wouldn’t have sat down for a week.” Astroman Nav spoke in a gruff, shouty voice, a voice suitable for declamations now hushed into the more mellow tones of everyday conversation. “You young women. It’s all the fault of that fellow Wills. Filled your heads with free-thinking nonsense.”

“Now, Nav, dear!” Delia was exasperated at the old buffer. And just how much of an act it was even she wasn’t prepared to say. “I want Stead to know all you can tell him. When he goes among the Foragers he won’t have much time or opportunity for spiritual affairs.”

What Nav had to say absorbed Stead for an hour as the party whooped and hollered and thumped on all around.

“We Astromen are the custodians of the race’s progress. We chart the future and hold the people firmly to the ancient beliefs. It is an onerous occupation and one taxing all our strength.” He smiled a little ruefully. “This man Wills who emancipated thought—or so the youngsters claim—was a little of a charlatan, when you boil it all down. But, certainly, he brought changes. Religion doesn’t seem quite so potent a force as it was when I was a young Astro novice. And I deplore that. Fine a girl as Delia is, she could be better if she took her religion more seriously.”

“But,” said Stead with the acuteness of the newly-educated, “if the ancient truths are true—I mean about the immortal being creating the world and the land of buildings, placing mankind here among the animals, providing our food and raw materials for the Foragers to bring home—if these are true, as they must be, why should anyone seek to doubt it?”

“Go and read Wills. But I like your fire. I believe you have the makings of an Astro novice. Although you are old chronologically, spiritually you are as yet newly born. I don’t think Wills will harm you much.”

“I… I don’t know. I hadn’t thought—”

“You’ll have to think about it after your Foraging tour of duty. If the Demons spare you, that is.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What? Hasn’t Delia or that scientist fellow—what’s his name, Bonaventura?— told you about Demons?”

“No.” Again that glorious feeling of new worlds opening to him flooded through Stead. Here, unexpectedly, like walking around a dark corner into a flood of light, fresh learning lay ready to spring into his experience.

“Demons,” said Astroman Nav, “were sent into the world by the anti-immortal one to bring penance and suffering, to try us, to make us struggle to find the peace of our own immortal souls through the bitter battles of conscience. Demons are anti-human, opposed to the godhead, utterly abhorrent. To overcome the Demons is to share in the eternal light of the immortal being.”

Stead tried to sort out this spate of new information. Demons? Well, everyone seemed to use the term as a curse word, a swearing block to let off their feelings. Now Nav was saying that Demons were in some way put into’ the world to test mankind, to serve as a practical yardstick to measure man’s own goodness. It all sounded very theoretical and religious.

Stead turned to Delia, who had walked across the room toward him with Simon. “Why didn’t you tell me, Delia? Was it Demons that Cargill, Simon, and you sniggered over that day?”

Simon laughed. A real, boisterous belly laugh. “No, Stead. Though what we discussed is a demon to many.”

Stead glanced at Delia as Simon’s face and voice and personality changed dramatically. The scientist suddenly took on the aspect of Cargill, and sheer bewilderment crushed Stead. How could he ever be expected to understand if no one would tell him?

Delia said, “Remember you’re a scientist, Simon, and not twenty years younger. Now, Stead, what of Demons?”

“It’s rather confusing. They are a sort of phantom monster, sent to plague mankind, to test our faith and worship of the immortal one.”

“More or less what we now believe,” and Simon nodded, back to his old wizened scientific self. “With all due deference to Nav as an Astroman, the Demons do stand a strong possibility of actually existing.”

“Oh, nonsense, Simon!” That was Delia, beautifully annoyed.

“Well, the Foragers keep on talking about the Demons they’ve seen. And you know how often Foragers never return.”

“Now you just listen to me, Simon! The nerve of it! A foremost scientist, talking like an ignorant Forager. Those cunning Foragers make up these stories. It give them importance, in their own foolish eyes, against the rest of humanity who do not venture Outside. Oh, I know Forager Controllers who’ve been Outside have told us the same stories, but a Forager Controller is really only half a Controller at best!”

Delia looked prettily indignant, cherishing her own beliefs and theories.

“But—” began Simon.

“And,” Delia rushed on, “the Foragers who don’t return have simply been killed or captured by enemies. And no Hunter is going to admit he was bested by an enemy, by a lost soul not of Archon! You know how much our soldiers resent being beaten.”

Stead, surprising himself, said, “That doesn’t seem surprising.” And stopped.

They all looked at him. Then Delia spoke again in a torrent of anger. She didn’t believe in Demons. Wills had said quite plainly that they were figments dreamed up by the old hierarchy to keep the workers in their place. No worker would dream of going Outside for fear of the Demons. Stead listened and again felt bewilderment at the shifting strands of logic and belief.

Delia was wearing a knee-length kilted garment of white cloth, embroidered around the hem and sleeves and throat with jewelled arabesques that glittered and glimmered in the lights. More than ever, wearing that garment in contrast to Simon’s yellow and green shirt and scarlet slacks and his own simple plain blue shirt and slacks, Delia made it plain to him that women just weren’t the same shape as men. He’d put the question, of course, and both Simon and Delia had told him that that was the way it had always been and the way it always, the immortal being willing, would.

So that when Belle, Delia’s friend from the radio laboratories, danced up, cheeks flushed, eyes aglow, holding out a goblet of wine, with an invitation to the dance, Stead decided—without daring to look at Delia—to accept. Delia said, “Be careful, Belle.”

“Of course, dear. I always ami” And she giggled to herself as though an enormous joke had been made.

Dancing off into the laughing throng, forming a line, swaying to the music, Stead’s first impulse to slip away and think over this Demon talk faded. Something happened to him. He looked at Belle. She wore a black dress with narrow cords over the shoulders, thigh length skirt of thin material that, if he hadn’t thought the idea un-Controllerlike, he would have sworn showed the sheen of flesh. She danced with her head tilted back, her mouth open, a pink tongue showing, laughing, laughing, laughing.

Stead let himself go. The music thumped a maddening rhythm in time with the best of his blood. For the first time the presence of a woman did not disconcert him. The feel of Belle’s waist under his fingers as they danced to and fro brought sensations wholly unrecognizable and wild, frightening and yet stimulating. At one and the same time he wanted to go on dancing, go on holding Belle, and to plunge off and away and cower in his cubicle, safe in the pages of a book.

“Enjoying yourself, Stead?”

“Very much. And you?”

“MMMmmm. I thought you said you couldn’t—whoops-dance?” I can t.

“Well, you’re doing very nicely, thank you…”

They gyrated out of one line into another. On the next pas-sade Belle expertly eluded the man’s waiting grasp and, towing Stead, floated away on lightly tapping feet. Magnetically drawn, Stead followed. A single, flashing glimpse of Delia, standing with her red curls agleam over the bobbing head, almost stayed him. But that taut, inward look lay over Delia’s beautiful face… and suddenly, to Stead, Belle’s viviacious brown skin meant life and gaiety and all the unknown joys and dark desires he had dreamed existed—knew existed—and had never tasted. Whatever happened—he was going to learn something new.

Borne on a buffet of expiring music they tumbled laughing through a narrow doorway. Here the electrics had been shaded by rose colored glasses; a deep luster lay on the small room and the cushion-scattered divan. The room smelt scented and secret and… hungry.

“I need a drink,” Belle said. She picked up a glass from a low table and, copying her, Stead took the second goblet. Drinking, he felt the wine course through his body like fire. Belle stared at him, her brown eyes seeming in that rosy light to grow larger. Stead had thought her skimpy black dress a drab clothing beside Delia’s glorious white costume, but now he realized anew and with a stunning impact that women’s shapes were different from men’s.

A knife-like pain took him in the small of the back.

Belle pouted. “Don’t you like me, then, Stead?”

“Like you? Of course! Why shouldn’t I?”

She laughed, a short throaty catching of her breath.

“Well, you don’t show it.”

Stead felt dismay. “But… but—” he stammered. “How can I? I mean, I haven’t done anything to displease you?”

“True, lover boy, too true. You’ve done nothing.”

She walked toward him, a gliding, swaying dance rather than a walk, both her hands outstretched, the glass spilling wine unheeded. She came close to him. She put her arms around him, clamping in a sudden and shocking vice-like grip across his back. Her body, soft and quite unmanlike, pressed against him.

For a timeless instant Stead stood rigid. Something was happening. He was changing. A feeling soaked through his body; his blood pounded. He knew he must do… do what? Put his hands so, and so…

Belle sighed. She lifted her head and her lips, red and ripe and, somehow quite illogically, inviting pouted up at him.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me, Stead?”

“Kiss? What’s that, Belle?”

She reached up on tip toe. He felt her against him. She reached her hands up, caught the back of his neck, his head. She pressed his head down.

“This.”

A number of things happened simultaneously.

Of those, three struck him with the greatest impact. And of the three his bodily change seemed less important than the blinding vision that crashed across his eyes.

And then Delia’s hands wrenched Belle away, a fist cracked across her chin, and knocked her sprawling; Delia’s face swam before him, the mouth open, the eyes blazing, the whole expression blistering contempt.

“You fool!” Delia said, her voice like the spitting of a cat. “You imbecile, Belle! I could have you sent to the workers for this!”

Belle, her black dress ripped down from one cord, groveled on the floor. Looking down on her white flesh, all rosy tinted in the light, Stead felt a feeling for the girl flowing from him; she looked crushed, beaten, stamped on like that rat out there.

“Delia… I wanted to— I’m sorry. But… he’s so masculine—”

“I know what you wanted. You’re a radioman, not a psychologist. Don’t you know you’re playing with fire, with gunpowder, with Stead? Now I’ll have to—” Delia suddenly realized that Stead was there, his ears wide open, drinking all this into the naked and palpitating cells of his brain, learning.

“I’ll see you later, Belle. Stead, come with me. And forget this. Forget it, do you hear!” Delia’s movements were controlled, almost precise.

Incredibly, from the floor, disheveled and panting, Belle cried, “You just want him for yourself, Delia! Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on—Psychology! A fine psychology that uses a bed for a laboratory bench!”

Delia gasped. Stead noted with surprise how her upper body—that disturbing region so different from a man’s— rose and fell in a tumult. She turned wrathfully, body strained, hands lifting with fingers clawed, then she relaxed. She took a deep breath.

“Think what little thoughts you like, Belle. I feel sorry for you. But you’re wrong in that dirty little mind of yours. Now, Stead.” She grasped his arm in a grip that, he felt with a wry understanding, was no different from a man’s. “You’re coming home!”