“Sir,” his secretary’s voice broke in, on override. “Vordict’s calling in, says it’s urgent, about your son, sir.”
The Guild had heard. The Guild was going to raise bloody hell about the situation and play hard politics with the electorate. He wasn’t ready for this. He had a son in trouble down there and Vordict, damn him, wanted to make an issue of what they all sensibly knew had been inevitable from the hour they reached this star, all to read him might-have-beens.
“He wants to keep moving,” Ian’s faint voice said. “He wants us to walk again. I’m cold, I’m out of breath, excuse the shakes.…”
“Put him on,” he told his secretary, regarding Vordict, and told Joy, “It’s Vordict. I’ve got to talk to him. Ian can’t hear us. But whatever he’s found down there, it’s not hostile, it’s all right…”
Ian gasped, a short, small intake of breath, and Patton’s heart froze.
Ian said, long-distance, “I lost my balance, is all. It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t anybody do anything stupid.”
Patton wished the Guild would take that to heart.
“Patton,” came the voice from the other channel. “Patton, you’ve forced this, this is on your head, it’s your son in danger, and you knew damned well there was a settlement close to the base. I have the documents. I have the witness. You knew before you made the drop there, tell me otherwise, and be advised I intend to take this before the council.”
* * *
VI
« ^ »
There was no offer of resistance, no threat, no weapon, and thus far the luck had been with the effort. Perhaps the moon-man sensed so and made no resistance to his kidnapping. Or perhaps malicious chance was running otherwise and everything only seemed this easy.
Manadgi did not reckon himself a superstitious man, nor a gullible one, or he tried not to be. Anything that proceeded this easily with so much force available to the other side, he greatly distrusted.
But the moon-man, at least a head shorter than he, seemed a fragile creature, easily out of breath, quickly winded on the mildest climb. The creature’s pale complexion turned paler still, and at times it staggered, but it never ceased to try to walk with him.
It might be he had put it in fear of its life. It might be it was simply the disposition of moon-folk to be acquiescent, for reasons such folk understood, but he could not persuade himself to trust that chance, no more than he could entirely persuade himself that the clockwork machines were harmless to intruders.
He walked and walked, and the moon-man stumbled along beside him, muttering to himself so constantly he began to wonder if the creature was habitually that addled or somehow injured in its wits. He had found it sitting in front of a square of grass, plucking stems and talking to itself, while poking at a black box full of buttons that perhaps made sense, but about what business he could not determine.
Perhaps it was mad. Perhaps all moon-folk were—along with those furious early pursuers that had given chase and then given up.
Or perhaps they were, after all, frail and gentle folk who could not even resist the kidnapping of one of their number—
But who then loosed the clockwork machines to destroy the valley?
The moon-man was lagging farther and farther off the pace he wanted, was staggering in his steps and then fell to his knees, holding his side. “Get up!” Manadgi told it sternly, and waved his hand.
The moon-man wiped his face and there was blood, most evidently blood, red as any man’s, running from its nose—a flood of life, broken forth by the running and the climbing he had forced it to.
He was sorry for it, then—he had not meant to do it harm and still it was trying to do what he asked it, with the blood pouring down its face.
He gestured with a push at its arm for it to sit down again, and it seemed glad and relieved, bent over and pinched its nostrils shut, then began to cough, which, with the bleeding, made him worry that it might choke itself.