“The wisdom of age. What happened?”
“She kissed me. Right there in the hallway of the. …”
“Spare me the geography,” Leoh cut in. “What did she say?”
“I bumped into her in the hallway. We, uh, started talking . . . sort ofShe seemed, well … worried about me. She got upset. Emotional. You know? I guess I looked pretty down … I mean, I’m not that brave … I’m scared and it must have shown.”
“You aroused her maternal instinct.”
“I … I don’t think it was that .. . exactly. Well, anyway, she said that if I’m willing to risk my life to save yours, she couldn’t protect her father any more. Said she was doing it out of selfishness, really, since he’s her only living relative…. I don’t believe she meant it, but she said it anyway.”
They had reached the building by now. Leoh grabbed Hector’s arm and steered him clear of a collision with the half-open door.
“She’s agreed to let us put Dulaq in the dueling machine?”
“Sort of.”
“Eh?”
“The medical staff doesn’t want him moved … especially not back here. She agrees with them.”
Leoh snorted. “All right. In fact, so much the better. I’d rather not have the Kerak people see us bring Dulaq to the dueling machine. Instead, we’ll smuggle the dueling machine into the hospital!”
They plunged to work immediately. Leoh preferred not to inform the regular staff of the dueling machine about their plan, so he and Hector had to work through the night and most of the next morningHector barely understood what he was doing, but with Leoh’s supervision he managed to dismantle part of the machine’s central network, insert a few additional black electronics boxes that the Professor had conjured up from the spareparts bins in the basement, and then reconstruct the machine so that it looked exactly the same as before they had started.