"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."