"Any time," Kimball Trent said.
"Come," Valur said. "Light talk shall wait until later."
Kimball Trent turned to follow his guides, conscious of the slim girl at his side, wondering how any woman could be so fearlessly reliant and so feminine at the same time. He glanced at the blond giant, saw the knowing look that came to the grey eyes when they went from him to Lura, and hotness flooded upward from his throat.
He turned his attention to the Elder. "What first?" he asked. "My people," the Elder said simply.
Together, they began their tour.
IV
Three weeks had passed since Kimball Trent's arrival. At first, he had met doubt and suspicion from the inhabitants of the tunnels beneath the rubble of New York. His manner of speech was odd, as were his weapons, his clothing and his knowledge. But gradually, he had been accepted by the majority of those he had met through the Elder.
The dwellers of the underground caverns were a strange admixture of modern and primitive cultures. None but the Elder, the Reader and his acolytes could read or write. They knew nothing of the past except what the Reader gave to them from his books, or what the Singers gave to them in their songs of legend.
They had been cleaved into three classes: workers, warriors and growers, each with its distinct duties, each contributing to the welfare of the whole. The warriors were the hunters of wild game and the protectors of their homes; the workers kept everything used in as good repair as they were capable of doing, except upon the mechanical machines and contrivances of which they had no knowledge either inherited or acquired. The growers were the food gardeners and flock tenders, utilizing their skill in abandoned subway tubes where gardens grew fabulously beneath the radi-lights studding the walls, and where various food and milk animals and food fowls were kept in penned-in tunnels.