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Mordred would have said Fuck you ifhe’d been capable of speech, but he wasn’t. The best he could do was a babbleof baby-talk that undoubtedly would have caused Mia to crow with a mother’spride. Now he didn’t bother with the buttons; he wanted what the robot had inthe bag too badly. The rats (he assumed they were rats) were alive this time. Alive,by God, the blood still ru
Mordred closed his eyes and concentrated.The red light Susa
Across the room, a door marked MAIN ACCESSslid open. Nigel tramped stolidly in, twitching his capsule of a head almostconstantly now, counting off not in two or three languages but in perhaps asmany as a dozen.
“Sir, I really ca
Mordred made a baby’s cheerfulgoo-goo-ga-ga sounds and held out his hands toward the bag. The thought whichhe sent was both clear and cold: Shut up. Give me what I need.
Nigel put the bag in his lap. From withinit came a cheeping sound almost like human speech, and for the first timeMordred realized that the twitches were all coming from a single creature. Nota rat, then! Something bigger! Bigger and bloodier!
He opened the bag and peered in. A pair ofgold-ringed eyes looked pleadingly back at him. For a moment he thought it wasthe bird that flew at night, the hoo-hoo bird, he didn’t know its name, andthen he saw the thing had fur, not feathers. It was a throcken, known in manyparts of Mid-World as a billy-bumbler, this one barely old enough to be off itsmother’s teat.
There now, there, he thoughtat it, his mouth filling with drool. We’re in the same boat, my littlecully—we’re motherless children in a hard, cruel world. Be still and I’llgive you comfort.
Dealing with a creature as young andsimple-headed as this wasn’t much different from dealing with the machines.Mordred looked into its thoughts and located the node that controlled its simplebit of will. He reached for it with a hand made of thought—made of hiswill—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 pleasedon’t hurt me please let me live)
and he responded:
All is well, don’t fear, cully, allis well.
The bumbler in the bag (Nigel had found itin the motor-pool, separated from its mother, brothers, and sisters by theclosing of an automatic door) relaxed—not believing, exactly, but hopingto believe.
Six
In Nigel’s study, the lights had beenturned down to quarter-brilliance. 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 onwhining deep in his throat. His gold-ringed eyes peered into the gloomy farcorner of the study, as if seeing something terrible there. Jake could rememberpeering into the corner of his bedroom the same way after waking from somenightmare in the small hours of the morning, a dream of Frankenstein or Draculaor
(Tyra
some other boogeyman, God knew what. Now,thinking that perhaps bumblers also had nightmares, he tried even harder totouch 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 abilly-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. Goback to sleep.”
“Leep.” Oy put his snout on his rightforepaw. “Oy-be ki-yit.”
That’s right, Jake thought at him, Oybe quiet.
The gold-ringed eyes, still lookingtroubled, remained open a bit longer. Then Oy winked at Jake with one andclosed 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 hardworld and always had been.
Oy dreamed of being with Jake beneath thegreat orange orb of the Peddler’s Moon. Jake, also sleeping, picked it up bytouch and they dreamed of Old Cheap Rover Man’s Moon together.
Oy, who died? asked Jake beneath thePeddler’s one-eyed, knowing wink.
Oy, said his friend. Delah.Many.
Beneath the Old Cheap Man’s empty orangestare Oy said no more; had, in fact, found a dream within his dream, and herealso Jake went with him. This dream was better. In it, the two of them wereplaying together in bright sunshine. To them came another bumbler: a sadfellow, by his look. He tried to talk to them, but neither Jake nor Oy couldtell what he said, because he was speaking in English.
Seven
Mordred wasn’t strong enough to lift thebumbler from the bag, and Nigel either would not or could not help him. Therobot only stood inside the door of the Control Center, twisting his head toone side or the other, counting and clanking more loudly than ever. A hot, cookedsmell had begun to rise from his i
Mordred succeeded in turning the bag overand the bumbler, probably half a yearling, fell into his lap. Its eyes werehalf-open, but the yellow-and-black orbs were dull and unmoving.
Mordred threw his head back, grimacing inconcentration. That red flash ran down his body, and his hair tried to stand onend. Before it could do more than begin to rise, however, it and the infant’sbody to which it had been attached were gone. The spider came. It hooked fourof its seven legs about the bumbler’s body and drew it effortlessly up to thecraving mouth. In twenty seconds it had sucked the bumbler dry. It plunged itsmouth into the creature’s soft underbelly, tore it open, lifted the bodyhigher, and ate the guts which came tumbling out: delicious, strength-givingpackages of dripping meat. It ate deeper, making muffled mewling sounds ofsatisfaction, snapping the billy-bumbler’s spine and sucking the brief dribbleof 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. Asa human baby (Roland had used the old Gilead endearment, bah-bo), hecould have taken no nourishment from either the juice or the meat. Would likelyhave choked to death on it. But as a spider—
He finished and cast the corpse aside ontothe floor, just as he had the used-up, desiccated corpses of the rats. Nigel,that dedicated bustling butler, had disposed of those. He would not dispose ofthis one. Nigel stood silent no matter how many times Mordred bawled Nigel,I need you! Around the robot, the smell of charred plastic had grownstrong enough to activate the overhead fans. DNK 45932 stood with his eyelessface turned to the left. It gave him an oddly inquisitive look, as if he’d diedwhile on the verge of asking an important question: What is the meaning oflife, perhaps, or Who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder? Inany case, his brief career as a rat- and bumbler-catcher was over.