“He is putting on a show of strength for the others,” Doc said. “Best let him. If you would, please?”
He issued a command that caused his grabb’s legs to fold, bringing it as low to the ground as it could go, and extended a hand. Ty took his arm and steadied him as he stepped off the robot and found footing on the ground. He planted the stick with his other hand, then cautiously let go of Ty. Then he advanced a step. All of these actions produced murmurs among the Diggers. Perhaps they had seen Doc initially as some kind of cyborg, but now understood that he was just a very old man. He walked several paces until he found a flat spot that suited him, then planted the stick.
“I may look five thousand years old,” he began, “but I am in truth a mere descendant of those you style cowards. Though I daresay you would take a more charitable view if you knew of the deeds that they performed during their long exodus. Do I have the honor of addressing one whose ancestor was Rufus MacQuarie?”
“We are all of that lineage,” the old man boomed.
“Then I think I have something that belongs to you,” Doc said. Moving deliberately, he pulled the stick out of its purchase on the ground and hefted it up until it lay horizontally across both of his outstretched palms. “Please accept my apologies for having borrowed it without your remit.”
Had the Spacers been able to watch all of the Diggers’ reactions at once, it would have yielded a bonanza of intelligence about the workings of their minds and of their society. That degree of mind reading was, in general, the sort of task assigned to Julians, so it could be assumed that Ariane’s moiling brain and avid senses were running full blast.
The young males seemed divided between a more vindictive group who wanted the stick of Srap Tasmaner confiscated immediately, and others of a more chivalrous turn of mind.
The group at large comprised a minority who were indignant about Doc’s expropriation of their shovel handle, but—more significantly—a majority who felt ashamed at the idea that they would take away an old man’s walking stick.
What those two groups had in common was that they took what Doc had said at face value. A smaller inner circle—the old man, the younger leader, and a woman of intermediate age who had stepped forward to confer with them—had the wit to understand that Doc was playing to the crowd, and not actually trying to initiate a conversation about the ownership of a piece of wood.
In other words, the Diggers were, as a whole, reacting much as any other group of humans might have done. Which was interesting and important data in and of itself, since much might have changed during five thousand years in the mines.
The discussion among the three leaders went on at some length and led eventually to an epidemic of head nodding. The old man squared off, sticks planted, his face set in judgment. The younger man and the middle-aged woman advanced toward Ty and Doc respectively. The man came to a halt two paces away from Ty, just out of the range where shaking hands or fisticuffs might become plausible. The woman kept on coming and took the stick out of Doc’s outstretched hands. This touched off a wave of fascinated reactions among the Diggers watching at a distance.
In a quiet but clear voice, the woman said, “Old man, you have shamed us with your words and obliged us to answer in kind. No hand shall be laid on you by virtue of your age.”
She stepped forward past Doc, sliding her hands together at the blunt end of the shovel handle, and began to whirl it around. Then with a decisive lunge forward she brought it down on the side of Memmie’s head.