Oy, said his friend. Delah. Many.
Beneath the Old Cheap Man's empty orange stare Oy said no more; had, in fact, found a dream within his dream, and here also Jake went with him. This dream was better. In it, the two of them were playing together in bright sunshine. To them came another bumbler: a sad fellow, by his look. He tried to talk to them, but neither Jake nor Oy could tell what he said, because he was speaking in English.
SEVEN
Mordred wasn't strong enough to lift the bumbler from the bag, and Nigel either would not or could not help him. The robot only stood inside the door of the Control Center, twisting his head to one side or the other, counting and clanking more loudly than ever. A hot, cooked smell had begun to rise from his innards.
Mordred succeeded in turning the bag over and the bumbler, probably half a yearling, fell into his lap. Its eyes were halfopen, but the yellow-and-black orbs were dull and unmoving.
Mordred threw his head back, grimacing in concentration.
That red flash ran down his body, and his hair tried to stand on end. Before it could do more than begin to rise, however, it and the infant's body to which it had been attached were gone. The spider came. It hooked four of its seven legs about the bumbler's body and drew it effortlessly up to the craving mouth. In twenty seconds it had sucked the bumbler dry. It plunged its mouth into the creature's soft underbelly, tore it open, lifted the body higher, and ate the guts which came tumbling out: delicious, strength-giving packages of dripping meat. It ate deeper, making muffled mewling sounds of satisfaction, snapping the billybum bier's spine and sucking the brief dribble of marrow. Most of the energy was in the blood-aye, always in the blood, as the Grandfathers well knew-but there was strength in meat, as well. As a human baby (Roland had used the old Gilead endearment, bah-bo), he could have taken no nourishment from either the juice or the meat. Would likely have choked to death on it.
But as a spider-
He finished and cast the corpse aside onto the floor, just as he had the used-up, desiccated corpses of the rats. Nigel, that dedicated busding butler, had disposed of those. He would not dispose of this one. Nigel stood silent no matter how many times Mordred bawled Nigel, I need you! Around the robot, the smell of charred plastic had grown strong enough to activate the overhead fans. DNK 45932 stood with his eyeless face turned to the left. It gave him an oddly inquisitive look, as if he'd died while on the verge of asking an important question: What is the meaning of life, perhaps, or Who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder"? In any case, his brief career as a rat- and bumblercatcher was over.
For the time being, Mordred was full of energy-the meal had been fresh and wonderful-but that wouldn't last long. If he stayed in his spider-shape, he'd use up this new reservoir of strength even faster. If he went back to being a baby, however, he wouldn't even be able to get down from the chair in which he was sitting, or once more put on the diaper-which had, of course, slid off his body when he changed. But he had to change back, for in his spider-shape he couldn't tfiink clearly at all. As for deductive reasoning? The idea was a bitter joke.
The white node on the spider's back closed its human eyes, and the black body beneath flushed a congested red. The legs retracted toward the body and disappeared. The node which was the baby's head grew and gained detail as the body beneath paled and took on human shape; the child's blue eyes-bombardier eyes, gunslinger eyes-flashed. He was still full of strength from the bumbler's blood and meat, he could feel it as the transformation rushed toward its conclusion, but a distressing amount of it (something like the foam on top of a glass of beer) had already dissipated. And not just from switching back and forth, either. The fact was that he was growing at a headlong pace. That sort of growth required relentless nourishment, and there was damned little nourishment to be had in the Arc 16 Experimental Station. Or in Fedic beyond, for that matter. There were canned goods and meals in foil packets and powdered power drinks, yar, plenty of those, but none of what was here would feed him as he needed to be fed. He needed fresh meat and even more than meat he needed blood. And the blood of animals would sustain the avalanche of his growth for only so long. Very soon he was going to need human blood, or the pace of his growth would first slow, then stop. The pain of starvation would come, but that pain, twisting relentlessly in his vitals like an auger, would be nothing to the mental and spiritual pain of watching them on the various video screens: still alive, reunited in their fellowship, with the comfort of a cause.