Mordred would have said "Fuck you" if he'd been capable of speech, but he wasn't. The best he could do was a babble of baby-talk that undoubtedly would have caused Mia to crow with a mother's pride. Now he didn't bother with the buttons; he wanted what the robot had in die bag too badly. The rats (he assumed they were rats) were alive this time. Alive, by God, the blood still running in their veins.
Mordred closed his eyes and concentrated. The red light Susannah had seen before his first change once more ran beneath his fair skin from the crown of his head to the stained right heel. When that light passed the open wound in the baby's hip, the sluggish flow of blood and pu**y matter grew briefly stronger, and Mordred uttered a low cry of misery. His hand went to the wound and spread blood over the small bowl of his belly in a thoughtless comforting gesture. For a moment there was a sense of blackness rising to replace the red flush, accompanied by a wavering of the infant's shape. This time there was no transformation, however. The baby slumped back in the chair, breathing hard, a tiny trickle of clear urine dribbling from his penis to wet the front of the towel he wore. There was a muffled pop from beneath the control panel in front of the chair where the baby slumped askew, panting like a dog.
Across the room, a door marked MAIN ACCESS slid open.
Nigel tramped stolidly in, twitching his capsule of a head almost constantly now, counting off not in two or three languages but in perhaps as many as a dozen.
"Sir, I really cannot continue to-"
Mordred made a baby's cheerful goo-goo-ga-ga sounds and held out his hands toward the bag. The thought which he sent was both clear and cold: Shut up. Give me what I need.
Nigel put the bag in his lap. From within it came a cheeping sound almost like human speech, and for the first time Mordred realized that the twitches were all coming from a single creature.
Not a rat, then! Something bigger! Bigger and bloodier!
He opened the bag and peered in. A pair of gold-ringed eyes the hoo-hoo bird, he didn't know its name, and then he saw die thing had fur, not feathers. It was a throcken, known in many parts of Mid-World as a billy-bumbler, this one barely old enough to be off its mother's teat.
There now, there, he thought at it, his mouth filling with drool. We're in the same boat, my little cully-we're motherless children in a hard, cruel world. Be still and I'll give you comfort.
Dealing with a creature as young and simple-headed as this wasn't much different from dealing with the machines. Mordred looked into its thoughts and located the node that controlled its simple bit of will. He reached for it with a hand made of thought-made of his will-and seized it. For a moment he could hear the creature's timid, hopeful thought
(don't hurt me please don't hurt me; please let me live; I want to live have fun play a little; don't hurt me please don't hurt me please let me live)
and he responded:
All is well, don't fear, cully, all is well.
The bumbler in the bag (Nigel had found it in the motorpool, separated from its mother, brothers, and sisters by the closing of an automatic door) relaxed-not believing, exactly, but hoping to believe.
SIX
In Nigel's study, the lights had been turned down to quarterbrilliance.
When Oy began to whine, Jake woke at once. The others slept on, at least for the time being.
What's wrong, Oy?
The bumbler didn't reply, only went on whining deep in his throat. His gold-ringed eyes peered into the gloomy far corner of the study, as if seeing something terrible there. Jake could remember peering into the corner of his bedroom the same way after waking from some nightmare in the small hours of die morning, a dream of Frankenstein or Dracula or
(Tyrannasorbet Wrecks)
some other boogeyman, God knew what. Now, thinking that perhaps bumblers also had nightmares, he tried even harder to touch Oy's mind. There was nothing at first, then a deep, blurred image
(eyes eyes looking out of the darkness)
of something that might have been a billy-bumbler in a sack.
"Shhhh," he whispered into Oy's ear, putting his arms around him. "Don't wake 'em, they need their sleep."
"Leep," Oy said, very low.
"You just had a bad dream," Jake whispered. "Sometimes I have them, too. They're not real. Nobody's got you in a bag. Go back to sleep."
"Leep." Oy put his snout on his right forepaw. "Oy-be ki-yit."
That's right, Jake thought at him, Oy be quiet.
The gold-ringed eyes, still looking troubled, remained open a bit longer. Then Oy winked at Jake with one and closed both.
A moment later, the bumbler was asleep again. Somewhere close by, one of his kind had died... but dying was the way of the world; it was a hard world and always had been.
Oy dreamed of being with Jake beneath the great orange orb of the Peddler's Moon. Jake, also sleeping, picked it up by touch and they dreamed of Old Cheap Rover Man's Moon together.
Oy, who died? asked Jake beneath the Peddler's one-eyed, knowing wink.