Crane shook his head.
"Then you, Your Cognizance. When your followers have installed you as calde, it could prove a most useful thing to know."
"I'll never be calde," Silk told him, "and I have never wished to be." He accepted the almost weightless grid, and stared at its fluid lines. "This is what lets a flier fly? This shape?"
Lemur nodded. "With the material from which it's made. Tarsier's analyzing that. When you broke into Blood's villa Phaesday night-I know all about that, you see. When you broke in, didn't you wonder why Crane's city had sent him to watch Blood?"
"I didn't realize he was a spy then," Silk explained. He put down the grid and fingered the swelling that Potto's fist had left on the side of his head. He felt weak and a little dizzy.
"To keep his masters appraised of Blood's progress with the eagle," Lemur told him. "More than twenty-five years ago, I realized the possibilities of flight. I saw that if our troopers could fly as fliers did, enemy troop movements would be revealed at once, that picked bodies of men could land behind an enemy's lines to disrupt communications, and all the rest of it. As soon as I was free to act, I backed various experimenters whose work appeared promising. None developed a device capable of carrying a child, much less a trooper."
Recalling Hammerstone, Silk asked, "Why not a soldier?"
Crane grunted. "They're too heavy. Lemur there weighs four times as much as you and me together."
"Ah!" Lemur turned to Crane. "You've looked into the matter, I see.".
Crane nodded. "Fliers are actually a bit smaller than most troopers. I'm small, as everybody keeps reminding me. But I'm bigger than most fliers."
"You sound as though you've seen some close up."
"Through a telescope," Crane said. "Want to object that I had nothing to compare them to?"
"To oblige you, yes."
"I didn't need anything. A small man isn't proportioned like a big one, and as a small physician I'm very much aware of that. A small man's head is bigger'in proportion to his shoulders, for instance."
Silk fidgeted. "If someone may be dying ..."
"That someone could be you, Your Cognizance." Lemur laid a heavy hand upon Silk's shoulder. "Purely as an hypothesis, let's say that I plan to pull your head off as soon as you've conveyed the Pardon of Pas to this unfortunate. If that were the case, shortening our discussion would materially shorten your life."
"As a citizen I'm entitled to a public trial, and to an advocate. As an augur-"
The pressure of Lemur's fingers increased. "It's too bad you're not an advocate yourself, Your Cognizance. If you were you'd realize that there's a further, unwritten provision. It is that the urgent needs ofViron must be served. As we speak a mendacious and malcontented radical faction is attempting to overthrow our lawfully constituted Ayuntamiento and substitute for it the rule of one inexperienced-but deep, and I admit that freely-augur, stirring up the populace by alleging a lot of superstitious taradiddle about enlightenment and the supposed favor of the gods. Am I crushing your shoulder?" "It is certainly very painful."
"It can easily become more so. Did you really speak to a goddess in a house of ill repute? Say no, or I'll crush it."
"A goddess in the sense that the god who enlightened me is a god? Doctor Crane insists that there is no such being. Whether he's right or not, I'm inclined to doubt that there are any more such gods."
Lemur tightened his grip, so that Silk would have fallen to his knees if he could. "I want to tell you in some detail, Your Cognizance, how I hit upon the notion of using a bird of prey to bring down a flier for our examination. How I saw a hawk take a merganser at twilight and conceived the idea. How I combed Viron, with the utmost secrecy, for the right man to carry it out. And how I found him."
Silk moaned, and Crane said, "And so on and so forth. Let him go, and I'll tell you how we learned of it."
"Let him go!" It was Mamelta, dashing out of the dimness and throwing herself on Silk. "You damned robot! You THING!" She was naked save for a blood-smeared rag knotted about her waist, her full breasts and rounded thighs trembling, her bare skin the color of old ivory.
Lemur released Silk and cuffed her almost casually; white bone gleamed where his long nails had torn her forehead, until blood streamed forth to cover it.
Crane crouched beside her and snapped open his brown bag.
"Very good, Doctor," Lemur said. "Patch her up by all means. But not here." He threw her over his shoulder and stalked away.
"Come on." Agilely for a man of his age, Crane mounted the steps to the trapdoor Lemur had opened for them and tugged at one of its wheels.
"We can't leave her," Silk said. He moved his shoulder experimentally and decided no bones had been broken.
"We can't help her while we're prisoners ourselves."
Lemur's mocking voice echoed from the other end of the hold. "A man is dying, and this woman is bleeding like a stuck pig. Don't either of you care?"
"I do," Silk called, and hobbled in the direction of the voice.
Beyond the bow of the yawl, the flier lay on a blanket spread on the steel floor, his sun-browned face twisted in agony. Beside him stretched a second trapdoor, far larger than the one through which they had come-large enough, as Silk realized with some astonishment, to admit the yawl. An instrument panel stood against the bulkhead at the end of the compartment.
Lemur dropped Mamelta next to the flier. In a deafening roar that reminded Silk of the talus, he called, "Rejoin us, Doctor. You can't open that hatch." To Silk he added, "I tightened those locking screws, you see. And I'm a great deal stronger than both of you together, as well as a great deal heavier."
Silk had already knelt at the flier's head. "I convey to you, my son, the forgiveness of all the gods. Recall now the words of Pas, who-"
"That's enough." Lemur took him by the shoulder again. "We want the doctor first, I think. If he won't come, you must bring him."
"I'm here," Crane announced.
"This is our flier," Lemur said. "His name's Iolar. He has told us a little, you sec, though nothing of value, not even the name of his city. I would have to agree that he's scarcely taller than you, and he may well be a trifle lighter. Yet he is flier enough, or almost enough."
Crane did not reply. After a moment he took scissors from his bag and began to cut away the flightsuit. Silk tore a strip from his robe, wound it twice about Mamelta's head, and tied it.
Lemur nodded approvingly. "She will live to be grateful for your efforts, I'm sure, Patera. So will.lolar, I hope. Are you listening, Doctor Crane?"
Crane nodded without looking up. "I'm going to have to roll you over. Put your arms above your head. Don't try to roll yourself. Let me do it."
"You see," Lemur continued conversationally, "Iolar came down right here, in the lake. In one way, that was extremely convenient for us. We sent our little boat to the surface and scooped up him and his wings without help from the Civil Guard. Or from Blood, I should add, and very much to the discomfiture of them both." Lemur chuckled.
"That was early yesterday morning. As it chanced, I was ashore at the time, so Loris directed the recovery. Whether I could've managed things better, I can't say. Loris is not Lemur, but then who is? In any event one vital part was not retrieved, although the flier himself was, with most of the wings and harness and so on that permitted him to fly. He calls it a propulsion module, or PM. Isn't that so, Iolar?"
Crane glanced up at Lemur, then looked quickly back to his patient.
"Precisely so, Doctor. Without the device, our troopers will still be able to fly in a manner of speaking. But only to glide, as a gull does when it rides the breeze without moving its wings. It should be possible for such a trooper to launch himself from a cliff or a tower and fly a great distance, given a strong and favoring wind. Only under the most extraordinary conditions, liowcver, could lie take off from a level field. Under no conceivable conditions could he fly into the eye of any wind, even the weakest. Is this too technical for you, Patera? Doctor Crane's following me, I believe."