Busby, F M.

The Demu Trilogy.

Cage a Man.

FOR ELINOR.

A Cage There Was.

The ceiling above him was low and gray; Barton's first thought was. What am I doing in the drunk tank? On sec- ond thought it didn't stink like a drunk tank, and Barton was far enough awake to know that he was not hung over.

So he sat up and looked around. The first thing he noticed was that he was naked, along with everybody else. If this were a drunk tank, it had to be the first coeducational nude drunk tank in his limited experience.

He could make no guess as to .where he was, or why.

Presumably there was some other place he'd rather be, somewhere he belonged-but when he tried to think of one he drew a blank. Briefly, he wondered why the lack didn't bother him.

He seemed to be the only person awake; at least no one else was sitting up. Looking, Barton estimated about fifty persons sprawled in the room, neither crowded nor widely separated in a space about twenty-five feet square. He stood, and found the ceiling claustrophobically low: not much over six feet, clearing his head by a few inches but heavy'-heavy-hanging over it. He didn't like that.

Floor and walls were gray, as well as the ceiling. Sol- idly. There were no openings that he could see, anywhere.

There was light, a little yellowish, but no visible sources;

the light was simply there. The gray surfaces were not luminous and the air did not glow. Barton skipped that;

it wasn't important. What was important was that he had to take a leak.

No place. He stepped gingerly over and around the sleeping bodies, noting little about them except that they breathed. When he accidentally touched one, it was warm.

The floor was at body temperature also, with a slight de- gree of "give." After exploring the room thoroughly. Bar- ton was faced with the fact that it was not only solid but seamless. Yet the air (warm, like the floor) was fresh and clean. It seemed to move against him gently from all di- rections, though be could detect no gross air currents.

He still had to pee. Going to one comer of the room, he considerately rolled the nearest occupant out of splash- ing range and faced the corner. At first he couldn't do it;

all the times he'd stood in line (at theaters during inter- mission, at overcrowded facilities in tourist haunts), with impatient others waiting behind him, came up to clamp the sphincter tight. Waiting, he finally relaxed and the flow came. The interesting thing was that at the floor it simply disappeared: no splash or gurgle. The floor might as well not have been there. It looked dry, felt dry (Bar- ton felt it) and had no telltale smell at all (Barton smelled it).

He had a sudden wild thought that perhaps the whole room was an illusion, and gathered a few bruises trying to launch himself through the floor, a wall, and even the ceiling, before he decided that in this case liquids had cer- tain advantages over solids. His guess might be wrong, he knew, but that didn't mean it was stupid.

Other people were beginning to wake, sit up and even move around. Barton realized that he hadn't paid enough attention to the resident population, of which he was perhaps 2 percent. So he stood quietly in bis corner and looked.

The people ranged from ordinary to exotic, in Barton's view. Some were as usual as anyone can be among some fifty naked persons in a sealed room. Others were notable for such things as highly stylized patterns of tattooing, possible cosmetic surgery, and selective depilation. Still others,. Barton thought, must have come out of a freak show. Some of them be found hard to believe, but there they were. The frightening thing, though, was that these people were beginning to speak among themselves, and while Barton spoke French and a little German, and could recognize several other languages, he heard not one famil- iar word from anyone near him. Well, yes-there was one over therel

"Anybody here speak ENGLISH?" he bawled out sud- denly. From the far side of the room came a "YES." Ac- cented, but unmistakable. Barton began shouldering his way toward the sound, shouting "ENGLISH" now and then as a navigational aid.

"English" turned out to be a Doktor Siewen, a tall wiry man with a great bushy shock of white hair, and some alarming ideas. He and Barton traded names and shook hands, the ritual prelude to any constructive activity be- tween strangers.

"I know considerable languages, Barton," said Siewen, "and some of them I hear in this place, but not many.

Also I hear people talking in languages I didn't think ex- ist."

"I thought I knew a lot of ethnic types, myself, but some of these people don't look like anything I've ever seen, even in pictures."

'There is also that," Doktor Siewen began, but Just then he and Barton were knocked apart. A woman pushed between them; two men were chasing her. There were strangenesses about all three. One man caught her; the two sank to the floor together in tight embrace. But the second man came upon them, kicking and clawing; soon all three were battling viciously. Barton wasn't sure whose side the woman was on.

He started to say something,to Siewen, but a great feel- ing of heaviness came over him. ,His legs collapsed; the impact half-stunned him. He rolled over painfully, and was able to see that nearly everyone else was on the floor also. The heaviness increased.

"This tells us where we are. Barton," Doktor Siewen said, in great strain. "Or where we are not. You know what is this? Artificial gravity, it has to be."

Barton tried to shake the moths out of his brain. "How about just straight acceleration? I mean, on a spaceship thing you could get that, couldn't you?"

"On a spaceship with a room this big," said Siewen, "who could bother to disturb the navigation, only to stop a little squabble in the zoo?" The heaviness increased into blackout..,

Barton ached all over; someone was shaking him by the shoulder. "Wake up, Barton; wake up." It had to be Dok- tor Siewen, unless the whole thing had been a bad dream, so Barton opened his eyes. It hadn't been a dream, or else

it still was. Standing beside Siewen was a woman, not like any Barton had ever seen. Barton stood up; she was taller than he and very slim.

"Barton, this is Limila," Siewen said. "You can see, she is not the type human we grow on our world." Limila smiled; her teeth were small, and by Barton's standards, too many. She held out a hand for him to shake; it had an extra finger. A glance downward showed a pair of six- toed feet. The nails of both toes and fingers were thick and pointed, clawlike.

"Hello, Barton. Yes?" she said.

"Hello, Limila. Yes." Her hair was odd. It was per- fectly good shiny black hair, twisted up into a knot at the crown of her head, but forward of her ears it did not grow. The front hairline began above one ear and went straight up and over to the other; Barton recalled an old movie of Bette Davis playing Queen Elizabeth I. In com- pensation, at the back it grew solidly down to the base of the neck. Like she's slipped her wig. Barton thought be- fore he got his thoughts back on track. "Where's she from, Doc?"

"We can't yet talk such technical data,*' Siewen said.

"But Limila has been captured a longer time, was in an- other group with English-speakers, has fantastic talent of linguistics to learn as far as she has."

"Does she-" He turned to Limila. "Do you know what any of this is all about?" Her breasts were wrong.

Not in shape, but set very low and wide on the ribcage.

"We are have by the Demu, I think," she said. "No one know what happen then. No one come back." She looked away, her eyes half-closed, apparently losing inter- est in the discussion.

"What's a Demu?" Barton asked. She didn't answer, and in a moment walked away.

"Now what's wrong with herT*

"We were talking before," Siewen said. ^You were not awake for a long time. Barton; finally I worried you were not all right. But Limila told me of the Demu. Likely she did not feel to repeat herself.

"The Tilari, Limila's people, have star travel," he con- tinued. "They are not what you call easy to the mark.

They trade with other races and have respect from all.

But the Demu raid the Tilari or anyone else; they take people and there is the end of it. They come from no- where and go back the same way."

"Hell, somebody must know something about them,"

Barton growled. He was getting a little tired of being told how invincible the Demu were, because he didn't want to have to believe it.

"They are seldom seen. They have unconsciousness de- vices, which also derange memory function for a time, and other ways not to be noticed. They could have slept everyone here without the gravity if wanting to; that likely was for threat, to make us to behave better."

"Or maybe just plain sadism," Barton said. "I think Td like to meet one of them sometime without his magic gadget. Anybody know what they look like?"

"A small ship of them, raiding scout perhaps, crashed on Tilara very long time ago. All were killed. The Tilari just began to study the wreck and the dead ones; then must have come another ship. The wreck and dead ones gone, also all but two Tilari in the study group. The two had gone for food supplies and needed instruments."

"At least somebody lucked out," Barton said. "So what's their report?"

"I said, a long time ago. Barton. It is all vague, very vague by now; Limila has only read it in her schooling as a child.

"She says they were roughly human shape and size.

Hard like stone to the touch. She thinks they have not the features of face and other things-real people have. But the Demu think they are the only real people."

"How can anybody know that?"