“What do you mean, they’ve got a contact? Is he all right? Pat? Is he all right?”
“So far he’s fine,” Patton said. “We can hear him, he’s got his radio open, I’ve got him on the other channel. Turn on your B.”
“ I’ve got it,” Joy said, “ I’ve got it.”
“— a little out of breath,” Ian was saying, and coughed. “ My legs are wobbly. I’m not acclimated down here. I’d say we’re a couple klicks from the base, don’t know how to judge it. There’s like trees around here, kind of soft-trunked, big flat leaves, there’s like a lot of moss, there’s got to be water near here, I’d think, it’s all soft-leaved stuff…”
God, Patton thought, the boy was still observing, still was sending back his damn botany notes, but it was the native he wanted to know about.
He heard the creature talking again, he heard Joy ask, “ Is that one of them?” and he muttered, “So far there’s just one of them. Walked right through the perimeter alarm and accosted Ian. Ian ordered the rescue party back. He apparently wasn’t feeling threatened.”
“ Sir,” his secretary’s voice broke in, on override. “ Vordict’s calling in, says it’s urgent, about your son, sir.”
The Guild hadheard. 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.
Manadgi tucked his hands between his knees and squatted, waiting, hoping the creature knew what best to do to help itself. It was far from threatening anyone at the moment, rather, it seemed choked, so imminently in peril of its life that he took his water-flask and offered it, hoping it would help.
The moon-man looked at him with suffering eyes, then unstopped the flask and poured a little water out on his hand, to be sure it was water, he thought, before he wiped his face with it. Then he poured a little more into his bloody hand and had a mouthful, which seemed to help the coughing.
And the moment he stopped choking, the moon-man began muttering again, the odd creature…
Not an ugly or a fearsome being, Manadgi decided, except the blood smeared on its pale face. Its strangeness made him queasy about touching it, certainly about ever using the flask, but he greatly regretted hurting it, not having known how delicate it was.
Still, for all he knew, its associates had set one of the clockwork monsters on their trail.
“Get up,” he said to it, exactly the words he had used before. “Get up.”
The moon-man immediately tried to do what he asked, without a gesture, so the creature hadunderstood a word or two. He gained his feet with the flask tucked under his arm as if he meant to keep it, and kept talking to himself as he went, a thin, uncertain voice, now, lacking all affirmation.
They were past the stricken grandmother stone. They had left the scarring of the land and they went in tangle-grass that clung to the trousers and about the ankles. There was a stream down the hill, he remembered it at the other side of a steep bank and a stand of fern, a slab of rock. That was what he intended—a cold, clean stream and a moment to rest in a more sheltered place, difficult for the clockwork machines to negotiate.
“Be careful,” he cautioned the creature, with a tug at the blue sleeve, and it looked around at him, pale, bloody-faced, with a startled expression, after which the moon-man slipped and slid away from him in a rattle of rock and a crashing of fern.
The creature never cried out. It landed at the bottom half in the water and half on the bank and never moved as he came skidding down to it in fear and fright.