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.'
Silk said, 'So am I, I think.'
'At first the deficiency appeared only temporary. Iolar had a propulsion module-he admitted as much. Presumably it was torn free by the impact when he struck the water. We could fish it up, which we tried to do all that day, or he could tell us how to make them. This last, I am sorry to say, he refuses to do.'
Crane said, 'You must have some sort of medical facility on this boat. Something better than this.'
'Oh, we do,' Lemur assured him. 'In fact, we had him there for a while. But. he didn't repay our kindness, so we brought him back here. Is he conscious?'
'Didn't you hear me talking to him a minute ago? Of course he is.'
'Fine. Iolar, listen to me. I'm Councillor Lemur, and I am speaking to you. I may never do this again, and what I'm about to say will be more important to you than anything you've ever heard before, or that you're ever apt to hear. Do you hear me now? Say something or move your head.'
The flier lay face down, his face turned toward the long steel hatch in the deck. His voice, when it came, was weak and strangely accented. 'I hear.'
Lemur smiled and nodded. 'You've found me to be a man of my word, haven't you? Very well, I'm giving you my word that everything I'm about to say is true. I'm not going to try to trick you again, and I'm not inclined to be patient with you any longer. These are the men Potto and I told you about. This doctor is an admitted spy, just like you. Not a spy of ours, you may be sure. A spy from Palustria, or so he says. This augur is the leader of the faction that has been trying to seize control of our city. If Doctor Crane says you're going to die, you've won our argument. I'll let the augur bring you Pas's Pardon, and that's that. But if Doctor Crane says you'll live, you'll be surrendering your life if you continue to refuse. Have I made myself clear? I'm not going to waste any more of my time, or Potto's, in trying to force the facts we need from you. We're building new equipment to find your propulsion module on the bottom. We'll get it, and you'll have died for nothing. If we don't find it, we still have the eagle. She knows her business now, and all we'll have to do to get a propulsion module is send her after the next flier we see.'
Lemur pointed a finger at Crane. 'No threats, Doctor. No promises. Truth will cost you nothing, and a lie gain you nothing. Is he going to live?'
'I don't know,' Crane said levelly. 'He's got a couple of broken ribs-they haven't punctured the lung, or he might be dead already. At least four thoracic vertebrae are in pretty bad shape. There's damage to the spinal cord, but I don't think it's been severed, although I can't be sure. Given proper care and a first-rate surgeon, I'd say he might have a good chance.'
Lemur looked sceptical. 'A complete recovery?'
'I doubt it. He might be able to walk.'
'Now then.' Lemur's voice dropped to a whisper. 'Which will it be? In two or three hours we could have you ashore. Those black canisters all of you wear-how do they work?'
Silence filled the hold. Silk, bent over Mamelta, saw her eyelids flutter, and clasped her hand. Crane shrugged and snapped his bag shut, the sound as abrupt and final as the report of Auk's needler in the Cock.
'I didn't think you would,' Lemur told the flier almost conversationally. 'That's why I put out. Patera, you can start your rigmarole, if you want to. I don't care. He'll be dead almost before you finish it.'
'What are you going to do?' Crane asked.
'Put him off the boat.' Lemur strode to the instrument panel. 'As a man of science you might be interested in this, Doctor. This compartment is at the bottom of our boat, as I told you. It's tightly sealed, as you discovered a few minutes ago when you tried to open the hatch. At present,' he glanced at one of the gauges, 'we're seventy cubits below the surface. At this depth, the water pressure around our hull is roughly three atmospheres. Has anyone explained to you how we rise and sink?'
'No,' Crane said. 'I've wondered.' He glanced at Silk as though to see whether he, too, was curious; but Silk was chanting and swinging his beads over the head of the injured flier.
'We do it with compressed air. If we want to go deeper, we open one of our ballast tanks. That lets lake water in, so we lose buoyancy and sink. When we want to surface, we valve compressed air into that tank to force the water out. The tank becomes a float, so we gain buoyancy. Simple but effective. When I open this valve, more air will flow into this compartment.' Lemur turned it, producing a loud hiss.
