For two hours they proceeded, but with nothing of the cautious and skillful precision that the mountain clansmen had effected before the attack, for although the Son remained just behind them, constantly ready to prevent their escape, the rest of the horde, three hundred when assembled, shambled aimlessly along in groups of two or ten or fifty, pausing now and then to explore an unusual rock formation or to feel the bark of trees, to tear an insect's tiny body to pieces, or simply to stop, having for the moment apparently forgotten where they were going, or why. Only a sharp command from the Son made them resume the march, always apathetically, neither resentful nor willingly, as a troop of small rhesus monkeys might proceed through a particularly interesting part of the forest. "You called me 'you-who-fly,'" said O'Hara, speaking to the Son. "How did you know?" "You were watched," said the Son. "When you came through the Curtain, The Father knew of it at once. The Father knows everything that happens." "And you are taking us to him?" "Yes. In Washington." "Does he know you've captured us?" The Son looked puzzled, the skin above his bony eye sockets wrinkling up. He seemed uncertain of his answer for a moment, but then his scowl relaxed. "The Father knows everything," he said, as if that bit of catechism demolished any doubts. "He thinks of everything. He sent us here into the mountains to return with you." There was some interest in this game, watching the Son's mind struggling with unscheduled questions. "Suppose," O'Hara asked, "we had not come down into this valley today? How would you have captured us?" "It would have been done." "I see--the Father would have thought of something else?" "Yes." "But what?" "Whatever would have been the best thing possible. If he wished, the Father could have destroyed these mountains. All of them." "Why doesn't he? The mountain people are your enemies." "Oh, no, we have no enemies." The Son was speaking now with greater surety, for these were obviously lessons he'd been taught. "The mountain people are instead a medicine. As the Father cultivates some medicines in test tubes, so he cultivates the mountain people in the medium in which they thrive." "He permits them to exist?" "He encourages them to exist," the Son replied. "He stimulates them." "How?" "By sending us to fight with them." "But that destroys them." "Only some of them. And that stimulates those who survive. Also, it rids their stock of those unfit to multiply." "An admirable arrangement," said O'Hara. "As you say, the Father thinks of everything. I am beginning to want to meet him." "You will," the Son said. "You will meet him soon."