“Of course I do,” ‘he said. “What did you think, that I was just grandstanding? Did you think I thought you wouldn’t let me go and no matter what I said, I wouldn’t have to go, that I would be safe?”
I didn’t answer him, but he was right. That was exactly what I’d thought.
“Whoever goes,” said Sara, “will have to ride Old Paint. The kind of things they are, they’d have more respect for you if you were riding Paint. And another thing, Paint could get you out of there if the situation started going bad.”
“Mike,” honked Hoot, “the holy one speaks vivid sort of sense.”
“It’s all damn foolishness,” I told them. “I’m the one who is supposed to take the risks. I’m being paid for it.”
“Mike,” said Sara, sharply, “stop being infantile. Someone has to go down there-I might even be the one. There are three of us, not counting Hoot, and we can’t send him down there. It must be one of us. So let’s just marshal all the angles. . .”
“But it’s not just going down to face them,” I protested. “We also have to bargain for the brain case. Tuck would get it all screwed up.”
We crouched, glaring at one another.
“Toss a coin,” I growled. “Would you settle for a toss?”
“A coin only has two sides,” said Sara.
“That’s enough,” I said. “You’re out of this. It’s either Tuck or I.”
“No coin,” said Tuck. “I’m the one who’s going.” Sara looked at me. “I think we should let him go,” she said. “He wants to. He is willing. He will do all right.”
“The bargaining?” I asked.
“We want the robot’s brain case,” said Tuck. “We’ll give almost anything for it if we have to give it and. . .”
“Up to and including the rifle,” said Sara.
I blew up at her. “Not the rifle! We may need that rifle badly. It’s the only thing we have.”
“We need the brain case, too,” said Sara. “Without it we are sunk. And we may not need the rifle. Since we’ve been here I have fired it once and even that once was a senseless piece of business.
“There were the men back in the gully.”
She shrugged. “They had weapons. How much good did the weapons do them?”
“All I can do,” said Tuck, “is to find if they have the case and if they’d be willing to let loose of it. The actual bargaining will come later. We can all take part in it.”
“All right,” I said.
Let him go ahead and make a mess of it. If he did maybe we could give up this silly hunt for Lawrence Arlen Knight and try to figure out how to get off this planet. Although I had only the most foggy of ideas how to go about it.
I walked over to Paint and unloaded him, piling the water tins to the side of the trail and draping Roscoe’s limp metal body over them.
“All right, sport,” I said to Tuck.
He walked over and got into the saddle. He looked down at me and held down his hand. I took it and there was more strength in those long, lean fingers than I had thought there’d be.
“Good luck,” I said to him, and then Paint went galloping over the hilltop, heading down the trail. We peeked over the hilltop, watching.
I had said good luck to him and meant it. God knows, the poor damn fool would need all the luck there was.
Somehow he looked small and pitiful, bouncing along on the hobby’s back, the hood pulled up around his face and his robe fluttering behind him.
The trail turned and dipped and we lost sight of him, but in a few minutes he reappeared, riding across the flat toward the milling centaurs. Someone in the milling crowd caught sight of him and a shout went up. All the centaurs spun around to look at him and the milling stopped.
This is it, I thought, and I was watching so hard that I held my breath. In another second they might rush him and that would be the end of it. But they didn’t rush him; they just stood and looked.
Paint went rocking forward, Tuck bouncing on him like a doll clothed in a scrap of brown cloth. And that doll of his, I thought...
“What about the doll?” I whispered to Sara. I don’t know why I whispered. It was foolish of me. I could have shouted and that herd of centaurs would not have paid attention. They were busy watching Tuck. “What about the doll? Did he leave it here?”
“No,” she said, “he took it with him. He tucked it underneath the belt and pulled the belt up tight to hold it.”
“For the love of Christ!” I said.
“You keep thinking,” he said, “that it is just a doll, that there’s something wrong with him to carry it around. But there isn’t. He sees something in it you and I can’t see. It’s not just a good luck charm, like a rabbit’s foot. It’s a good deal more than that. I’ve watched him with it. He handles it tenderly and reverently. As if it were religious. A Madonna, maybe.”
I scarcely heard the last of what she had to say, for Paint was getting close to the herd of centaurs and was slowing down. Finally, fifty feet or so from them, the hobby stopped and stood waiting. Tuck sat there like a lump. He hadn’t raised his hand in a peaceful gesture. He hadn’t done a thing; he’d just ridden up to them, sitting on Old Paint like a lumpy sack.
I looked around. Sara had the glasses trained on the flat.
“Is he talking to them,” I asked.
“I can’t tell,” she said. “He has the hood pulled up around his face.”
It was all to the good, I told myself. They hadn’t killed him out of hand. There might still be hope.
Two of the centaurs trotted out to meet him, maneuvering so there’d be one on each side of him.
“Here,” said Sara, handing me the glasses.
Through them I could see nothing of Tuck except the back of that pulled-up hood, but could plainly see the faces of the two centaurs. They were the faces of tough and strong-willed men, brutal faces. They were far more humanoid than I had expected them to be. They had the appearance of listening to Tuck and from time to time one or the other of them seemed to make short replies. Then, suddenly, they were laughing, great shouts of uproarious laughter, taunting, contemptuous laughter, and behind them the herd took up the laughter.
I put down the glasses and crouched there, listening to the distant booming of that mass laughter which echoed in the twisted hills and gullies.
Sara made a wry face at me. “I wonder what is happening,” she said.
“Old Tuck,” I told her, “has mulled it once again.”
The laughter quieted and died away and once again the two centaurs were talking with Tuck. I handed the glasses back to Sara. I could see as much as I wanted to see without the help of them.
One of the centaurs swung about and shouted to someone in the crowd. For a moment the three of them seemed to be waiting, then one of the centaurs in the crowd trotted out, carrying something that glittered in the sunlight.
“What is it?” I asked Sara, who had the glasses up.
“It’s a shield,” she said. “And there seems to be a belt of some sort. Now I can see. It’s a belt and sword. They’re giving them to Tuck.”
Paint was wheeling about and heading back, the sunlight glinting off the shield and sword that Tuck held in front of him in the saddle. And back on the flat, the centaurs again were hooting with mocking laughter. It rolled in upon us, wave after wave of sound and out on the flat Paint built up sudden speed. He was running like a startled rabbit. When he disappeared from view, the two of us sat back and looked at one another.
“We’ll soon know,” I said.
“I’m afraid,” said Sara, “that it won’t be good. Maybe we made a mistake. You were the one to go, of course. But he wanted to, so badly.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why did the poor fool want to go? Mock heroics? This is no time, I tell you. . .”
She shook her head. “Not mock heroics. Something more complicated than that. Tuck is a complex sort of person . . .”