Before he could ask, The Grandfather said, "You have managed to do something that no one has done in more years than I like to think about. Why did you sneak away from the Board room, Comstock?"
The omnipresent muzzles of the circle of stun-guns preyed heavily on Comstock's muddled mind. He did not answer the question.
The Grandfather said, "I am not used to having to ask a question twice. Why did you leave when I was speaking? Did you not believe what I was saying?"
There was a curious expression, Comstock realized, on The Grandfather's face. Was it possible that what The Grandfather had said, down below, was not the truth? Could it be that Bowdler was as befuddled as the rest of them? Was some tremendous game, so complicated as not to be understood being played?
"I am waiting," The Grandfather said.
Comstock's slack face betrayed nothing. He was too tired, too confused, too upset to even hazard an opinion. Finally he croaked, "The only reason I left, was because I wanted to think."
"To think?" The tone was satirical. "Curious, most of my people are content to allow me to do all the thinking."
How despairingly Comstock wished that he too could let The Grandfather do all his thinking, but it was much too late for that.
Hunching over his desk, The Grandfather leaned forward and said, "Speak up, man, don't force me to employ certain methods which I have used on occasion."
Speak up! When all he wanted to do was lay his weary head on that comforting beard and forget everything? Speak up when his tongue was thick with thirst and his stomach growling with hunger? Speak up when his sleepless head was involuntarily dropping from time to time from sheer fatigue?