Nightmare journey

he was making so much noise himself.
    They walked on.
    A few moments later, composed again, Jask said, “What you said about your eyes-”
    “Yes?”
    “That can't be right.”
    “Can't it?” the bruin asked. If he did not chuckle aloud, the humor was implicit in the tone of his voice. He said, “What was it that I said?”
    “That your eyes were much better than mine. But I'm a Pure, and you're a tainted, and no eyes can be more efficient than what Nature, in Her Great Plan, originally intended for the Chosen Species to-”
    “I was formed in an Artificial Womb, or at least my ancestors came directly from the altered genes of someone who was. That first bearlike ancestor of mine was made by genetic engineers, which means he was not only the exotic and decorative child his parents wanted and paid for, but had been improved by the engineers wherever possible.”
    Jask rejected that notion without commenting on it.
    “Aren't I stronger than you, little man?” the bruin asked.
    “That means nothing.”
    “If I'm stronger, what's to keep me from having better eyesight? Clearly, my muscles are better than yours. Why not my eyes as well?”
    “The very fact that you are gargantuanly muscled is evidence of your inferiority in comparison with Pure men. A true man can create machines to do the work his muscles once did. A true man can create weapons to destroy enemies a hundred times his size, weight and strength. Muscles are the sign of a throwback, indicating genetic damage.”
    “Muscles are worthless, then?”
    “Yes.”
    “But don't you wish you had them now?”
    Jask said nothing.
    “And don't you wish you had my eyesight-even if it is no better than yours? I seem to find my way well enough. And here, be careful now. We're making a turn into a side tunnel.”
    Jask felt his way around the twist in the stone and had to step up his pace to catch the bruin again, since the tainted man had not slowed down for him. He said, “A Pure must never place himself in a position-”
    “To hell with that,” the creature said, not nastily, just wearily. “I don't want to hear any more of your evangelism. You forget, anyway, that you're no longer a Pure, yourself.”
    Jask felt tears burning at the corners of his eyes and quietly cursed himself for his emotional weakness. He was relieved that the bruin could not see this final evidence of his moral decay, this ultimate, very unmanly weakness.
    They walked for another three minutes, without speaking, listening to the brackish water splash under their feet.
    Then the bruin thought to him: It's not unmanly.
    What do you mean?
    Tears, crying.
    Jask realized, bitterly, that with a telepath he had no real privacy unless the creature was gracious enough to grant it to him.
    Men cry, the bruin said. Men have always cried. If your holy Lady Nature gave you tear ducts, what else are they for?
    Keeping the eye clean.
    The bruin said, I hadn't realized the Pures practiced a machismo sort of-
    “Please cease speaking to me that way,” Jask said. “I won't have a tainted in my mind like that. It makes me ill.”
    The bruin did not respond, and the attitude he took seemed to mean he had been hurt by the rebuff.
    A moment later the creature stopped and said, “We'll be getting out of the drains now.”
    “How?” Jask asked.
    “Can't you see the entrance cover overhead?” the bear asked.
    The question had simply been meant to taunt Jask, to repay him a little for his brusque rejection of the quasi-man's sympathy. Still, he peered into the pitch darkness overhead, staring hard, desperate for a glimpse of the outline of a door. So far as he could tell, there was not even a ceiling above them, only unlimited, empty space.
    “Here,” the bruin grunted, gripping something heavy, straining upward, rattling a heavy stone slab out of place. A few seconds later he had lifted the shield out of the way and slid it onto the floor of the room above. Faint, gray light shone into the sewer entrance, doing little to dispel the darkness but enough to quiet some of Jask's fear. The air that came with the light was dry and warm, somewhat stale but infinitely preferable to the degrading stench of the drains.
    “What's this?” Jask asked.
    “A warehouse,” the bruin said.
    “Is it safe?”
    “Perfectly.”
    “You seem to know the drains well.”
    “I've scouted them,” the bear-man said. “Against just such a need as this.”
    He gripped the edges and muscled himself through the manhole, collapsed onto the floor above and swung out of