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Show swiftly clumped over, sat on the chair, and rested its metal hands on its knees. There followed sighs of relief-and laughter, too-as the robot, after resting a moment reached under the chair and extricated the outraged bird, tucked him firmly under its arm, and clumped off to lock the screaming and struggling thing in the fruit cellar. The robot was followed full close by the remanants of the red DragonGoose flock, squawking in a bewildered way and nipping occasionally at the machine's metal heels. As the sounds of the tumult faded, Dr'Anya sunk, exhausted, in the one other chair that had survived the battle upright. Her friends gathered, around her, all talking and disputing at once about what could have possessed the bird to have carried on in such a way. For though the reds had a reputation for meaness and not a little stupidity; they had never been known before to charge their own masters. "I know n o t . . . " said Dr'Anya to the questions pelting her from every side. "I know n o t . . . " One of the older women in the group-in truth, Anya's Great Aunt Sitchka-came to the rescue. "In faith, the stupid bird has been in the wild onions," she said firmly. "Never does it fail to send them mad." An elderly man, stooping over and piling scattered cookies into a plate, looked around at the woman and expressed mild surprise. "Sayest thou, Sitchka? Prithee, wherefrom plucked thou that notion?" The man was Sitchka's partner, the present Needlesmith Doctor of the Council. "Know I that thing for a fact, Leland!" she answered with some asperity. 232 |
