could become a great nuisance." Gregory winced at the raucous noise around him. As they walked ahead through the trees, it dwindled behind them; but before it had faded, the music of the next rock wafted toward them on a truant breeze.
"It is not terribly loud yet, Gregory," Fess suggested. "It is not truly the volume that irritates you."
"Cordelia," Rod said, "stop nodding."
"Mayhap." Gregory looked distinctly unhappy. "Yet the coarseness of it doth jar upon mine ear."
"Even so, son," Gwen agreed.
"It is the timbre, the quality of the sound, that bothers you, is it not?" Fess asked Gregory. Page 33
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"Cordelia," Rod said, "stop bobbing!"
"The quality?" Gregory frowned, listening to the music for a minute. "Aye, 'tis summat of the sort. 'Tis harsh; an 'twere less so, that fall of notes might be a ripple, whereas now, 'tis a grating."
"Perhaps it is the rhythm of the bass, the low notes, that bothers you."
"Magnus!" Rod snapped. "Can't you walk without tapping your toes?"
"Mayhap." Gregory cocked his head to the side, listening. "Aye, for each third beat hath stress when it should not… Fess!" Gregory's eyes widened. "It doth no longer grate upon mine ear!"
"I had hoped that would occur."
"Yet how hast thou…Oh! When I do begin to analyze it, the music doth cease to irritate, and doth fascinate! Or if not it, at the least its composition!"
"Precisely, Gregory. There are few irritants that cannot become a source of pleasure, if you make them objects of study."
"Fess! It hath become greatly louder!" Magnus called.
"It has." The robot-horse's head lifted. "What causes that?" The path widened suddenly, and they stepped past the last trees into a broad meadow with a stream running through it; but on the other side of the stream was a churning mass.
"Well, then, what have we here?" Geoffrey growled.
"Naught but a pack of children." Magnus looked up, frowning, then stared. "A pack of children ?"
"'Tis the bairns of three villages, at the least!" Gwen exclaimed.
"Each beast comes in its own manner of grouping," Gregory said. "Sheep come in flocks, as do birds—and lions come in prides. Yet 'tis wolves do come in packs, brother."
"Then what do children come in?" Geoffrey demanded.
"Schools," Gregory answered.
Geoffrey turned away with a shudder. "Scour thy mouth, brother! An thou dost wish to be fish, thou mayest go thine own way!"
"I do not seek to gain on such a scale," Gregory protested.
"Whatever their aggregate, we must discover their purpose." Magnus jumped into the air and wafted over the stream toward the mob of children. "Come, my sibs! Let us probe!" Rod started to call him back, alarmed, but found Gwen's hand on his arm. "There is no danger, and we must discover wherefore these children are gathered here."
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Rod subsided, nodding. "You're right. Let the younger generation take care of its own." Cordelia, Geoffrey, and Gregory swooped up to follow Magnus with yelps of delight.
"However," Rod said, "I'd like to hedge my bets. Fess, you don't suppose that you…"
"Certainly, Rod." The great black horse backed up from the riverbank a little, then bounded into a full charge, accelerating to a hundred miles per hour in fifty feet, and sprang into the air, arcing high over the water to come thudding down ten feet past the opposite bank. Not that he needed to fear wetting, of course—his horse-body had been built with watertight seams. But jumping was faster, and the river was muddy, and it would have been so tedious to have had to clean all that sediment out of his artificial horsehair.
Still, the children could have waited.
"I see a boat." Gwen pointed downstream.
Rod looked up and nodded. "Careful, dear. It gets soggy, over there." He offered his arm; they began picking their way through the cattails.
By the time Fess caught up, the