The Star Fox (27 page)

Heim forced a jeering note: ‘The practical limit of a maser beam is about twenty million kilometers. After that, if nothing else, the position error for a ship gets too big. And there’s no way to lock onto an accelerating vessel till she’s so close that you might as well use an ordinary ‘caster. Her coordinates change too fast, with too many unpredictables such as meteorite dodging. So how many units have you got on known orbits within twenty million kilometers?’

‘Insult me not,’ Cynbe replied quietly. He stalked to the wall, brushed aside a curtain of flowers and punched the keys of an infotrieve. It chattered and extruded a print-out. He brooded over the symbols. ‘
Inisant
the cruiser and
Savaidh
the lancer can we reach. All ignorant must the others wheel their way, until one by one they return on slow schedule and find only battle’s ashes.’

‘What are the factors for those two?’ Heim inquired. Mostly he was holding at bay the blood-colored stillness. It jarred him – not too much to jam the numbers into his memory – when Cynbe read off in English the orbital elements and present positions.

‘Hence have I sent my race-brothers to summon them,’ the Aleriona went on. ‘At highest acceleration positive and negative,
Savaidh
takes orbit around Europe Neuve in eighteen hours,
Inisant
in twenty-three. I think not the Foxfolk will dread for you thus soon. With three warcraft aloft, this entire planet do we scan. Let your ship make the least of little moves, and destruction shall thunder upon her unstoppable. Although truth, when ready for smiting we shall send detector craft all places and seek her lair.’

His tone had not been one of threat. It grew still milder: This do I tell you in my thin hoping you yield her. Gallant was that ship, unfitting her death where the stars cannot see.’

Heim pinched his lips together and shook his head.

‘What may I ‘offer you for surrender,’ Cynbe asked in sadness, ‘unless maychance you will take my love?’

‘What the devil!’ Heim exclaimed.

‘We are so much alone, you and I,’ Cynbe sang. For the first time scorn touched his voice, as he jerked his tail in the direction of the warriors who stood, blank-faced and uncompre
hending, half hidden in the twilight. Think you I am kin to that?’

He glided closer. The illumination played over shining locks and disconcertingly fair countenance. His great eyes lingered on the man. ‘Old is Alerion,’ he chanted, ‘old, old. Long-lived are the red dwarf stars, and late appears life in so feeble a radiance. Once we had come to being, our species, on a planet of seas vanished, rivers shrunk to trickles in desert, a world niggard of air, water, metal, life – uncountable ages lingered we in savagehood. Ah, slow was the machine with coming to us. What you did in centuries, we did in tens upon thousands of years; and when it was done, a million years a-fled, one society alone endured, swallowed every other, and the machine’s might gave it upon us a grip not to be broken. Starward fared the Wanderers, vast-minded the Intellects, yet were but ripples over the still deep of a civilization eternity-rooted. Earth lives for goals, Alerion for changelessness. Understand you that, Gunnar Heim? Feel you how ultimate the winter you are?’

‘I – you mean—’ Cynbe’s fingers stroked like a breath across the human’s wrist. He felt the hair stir beneath them, and groped for a handhold in a world suddenly tilting. ‘Well, uh, it’s been theorized. That is, some people believe you’re just reacting because we threaten your stability. But it doesn’t make sense. We could reach an accommodation, if all you want is to be let alone. You’re trying to hound us out of space.’

‘Thus must we. Sense, reason, logic are what, save instruments of most ancient instinct? If races less powerful than we change, that makes nothing more than pullulation among insects. But you, you come in ten or twenty thousand years, one flick of time, come from the caves, bear weapons to shake planets as is borne a stone war-ax, you beswarm these stars and your dreams reach at the whole galaxy, at the whole cosmos.
That
can we not endure! Instinct feels doom in this becoming one mere little enclave, given over helpless to the wild mercy of those who bestride the galaxy. Would you, could you trust a race grown strong that feeds on living brains? No more is Alerion able to trust a race without bounds to its hope. Back to your own planets must you be cast, maychance back to your caves or your dust.’

Heim shook the soft touch loose, clenched his fists and growled: ‘You admit this, and still talk about being friends?’

Cynbe confronted him squarely, but sang with
less
than
steadiness: ‘Until now said I “we” for all Alerion. Sure is that not truth. For when first plain was your menace, plain too was that those bred stiff-minded, each for a one element of the Final Society, must go down before you who are not bound and fear not newness. Mine was the master type created that it might think and act as humans and so overmatch them.’ His hands smote together. ‘Lonely, lonely!’

Heim looked upon him in his beauty and desolation, and found no words.

Fiercely the Aleriona asked: ‘Guess you not how I must feel alone, I who think more Earthman than any save those few created like me? Know you not that glory there was to be on Earth, to lock with minds that had also no horizon, drown in your books and music and too much alive eye-arts? Barren are we, the Intellect Masters of the Garden of War; none may descend from us for troubling of Alerion’s peace; yet were we given the forces of life, that our will and fury rear tall as yours, and when we meet, those forces bind us through rites they knew who stood at Thermopylae. But … when you seized me, Gunnar Heim, that once you ransomed your daughter with me … afterward saw I that too was a rite.’

Heim took a backward step. Boldness ran down his spine and out into every nerve end.

Cynbe laughed. The sound was glorious to hear. ‘Let me not frighten you,
Star Fox
captain. I offer only that which you will take.’ Very gently: ‘Friendship? Talk? Together-faring? I ask you never betrayal of your people. Well might I order a wresting from you of your knowledge and plans, but never. Think you are a war captive, and no harm that you share an awareness with your captor, who would be your friend.’

My God
, it leaped in Heim. The sounds about him came through as if across a barrier of great distance or of fever.
Give me some time and … and I could use him.

‘Recall,’ Cynbe urged, ‘my might on Alerion stands high. Well can I someday make a wall for the race that bred you, and so spare them that which is extinction.’

No!
Sheer reflex. I
won’t. I can’t
.

Cynbe held out one hand. ‘Clasp this, as once you did,’ he begged. ‘Give me oath you will seek no escape nor warning to your breedmates. Then no guard shall there be for you; freely as myself shall you betread our camps and ships.’

‘No!’ Heim roared aloud.

Cynbe recoiled. His teeth gleamed forth. ‘Little the honor you show to me,’ he whispered.

‘I can’t give you a parole,’ Heim said.
Whatever you do, don’t turn him flat against you. There may be a chance here somewhere. Better dead, trying for a break, than
—Something flashed across his brain. It was gone before he knew what it was. His consciousness twisted about and went in a pursuit that made the sweat and heart-banging take over his body again.

Somehow, though every muscle was tight and the room had taken on an aspect of nightmare, he said dryly: ‘What’d be the use? I credit you with not being an idiot. You’d have an eye kept on me – now wouldn’t you?’

Where a man might have been angered, Cynbe relaxed and chuckled. Truth, at the least until
Fox II
be slain. Although afterward, when better we know each the other—’

Heim captured the thought that had run from him. Recognizing it was like a blow. He couldn’t stop to weigh chances, they were probably altogether forlorn and he would probably get himself killed.
Let’s try the thing out, at least. There’s no commitment right away. If it’s obviously not going to work, then I just won’t make the attempt
.

He ran a dry tongue over dry lips, husked, and said, ‘I couldn’t give you a parole anyway, at any time. You don’t really think like a human, Cynbe, or you’d know why.’

Membranes dimmed those eyes. The golden head drooped. ‘But always in your history was honor and admiration among enemies,’ the music protested.

‘Oh, yes, that. Look, I’m glad to shake your hand.’ Oddly, it was no lie, and when the four slim fingers coiled around his Heim did not let go at once. ‘But I can’t surrender to you, even verbally,’ he said. ‘I guess my own instincts won’t let me.’

‘No, now, often have men—’

‘I tell you, this isn’t something that can be put in words. I can’t really feel what you said, about humans being naturally horrible to Aleriona. No more can you feel what I’m getting at. But you did give me some rough idea. Maybe I could give you an idea of … well, what it’s like to be a man whose people have lost their homes.’

‘I listen.’

‘But I’d have to show you. The symbols, the—You haven’t
any religion as humans understand it, you Aleriona, have you? That’s one item among many. If I showed you some things you could see and touch, and tried to explain what they stand for, maybe—Well, how about it? Shall we take a run to Bonne Chance?’

Cynbe withdrew a step. Abruptly he had gone catlike.

Heim mocked him with a chopping gesture. ‘Oh, so you’re scared I’ll try some stunt? Bring guards, of course. Or don’t bother, if you don’t dare.’ He half turned. ‘I’d better get back to my own sort.’

‘You play on me,’ Cynbe cried.

‘Nan. I say to hell with you, nothing else. The trouble is, you don’t know what you’ve done on this planet. You aren’t capable of knowing.’

‘
Arvan!
’ Heim wasn’t sure how much was wrath in that explosion and how much was something else. ‘I take your challenge. Go we this now.’

A wave of weakness passed through Heim.
Whew! So I did read his psychology right. Endre couldn’t do better
. The added thought came with returning strength. ‘Good,’ he accepted shakily. ‘Because I am anxious for you to realize as much as possible. As you yourself said, you could be a powerful influence for helping Earth, if the war goes against us. Or if your side loses – that could happen, you know; our Navy’s superior to yours, if only we can muster the guts to use it – in that case, I’d have some voice in what’s to be done about Alerion. Let’s take Vadász along. You remember him, I’m sure.’

‘Ye-e-es. Him did I gaintell in your party, though scant seemed he to matter. Why wish you him?’

‘He’s better with words than I am. He could probably make it clearer to you.’
He speaks German, and I do a little. Cynbe knows English, French, doubtless some Spanish
–
but German?

The admiral shrugged and gave an order. One soldier saluted and went out ahead of the others, who accompanied the leaders – down the hall, into the morning across the field to a military flyer. Cynbe stopped once, that he might slip contacts over eyeballs evolved beneath a red coal of a sun.

Vadász waited with his guards. He looked small, hunched, and defeated. ‘Gunnar,’ he said dully, ‘What’s this?’

Heim explained. For a moment the Hungarian was puzzled. Then hope lit in his visage. ‘Whatever your idea is,
Gunnar, I am with you,’ he said, and masked out expression.

Half a dozen troopers took places at the rear of the vehicle. Cynbe assumed the controls. ‘Put us down in the square,’ Heim suggested, ‘and we’ll stroll around.’

‘Strange are your ways,’ Cynbe cantillated. ‘We thought you were probed and understood, your weakness and shortsightedness in our hands, but then
Fox II
departed. And now—’

‘Your problem is, sir, that Aleriona of any given class, except no doubt your own, are stereotypes,’ Vadász said. ‘Every human is a law to himself.’

Cynbe made no reply. The flyer took off.

It landed minutes later. The party debarked.

Silence dwelt under an enormous sky. Fallen leaves covered the pavement and overflowed the dry fountain, where Lamontagne’s effigy still stood proud. A storm had battered the market booths, toppled cafe tables and chairs, ripped the gay little umbrellas. Only the cathedral rose firm. Cynbe moved toward it. ‘No,’ Heim said, ‘let’s make that the end of the tour.’

He started in the direction of the river. Rubbish rustled from his boots, echoes flung emptily back from walls. ‘Can’t you see what’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Men lived here.’

‘Hence-driven are they,’ Cynbe answered. Terrible to me Aleriona is an empty city. And yet, Gunnar Heim, was this a … a dayfly. Have you such rage that the less than a century is forsaken?’

‘It was going to grow,’ Vadász said.

Cynbe made an ugly face.

A small huddle of bones lay on the sidewalk. Heim pointed. ‘That was somebody’s pet dog,’ he said. ‘It wondered where its gods had gone, and waited for them, and finally starved to death. Your doing.’

‘Flesh do you eat,’ Cynbe retorted.

A door creaked, swinging back and forth in the breeze off the water. Most of the house’s furniture could still be seen inside, dusty and rain-beaten. Near the threshold sprawled the remnants of a rag doll. Heim felt tears bite his eyes.

Cynbe touched his hand. ‘Well remember I what are your children to you,’ he crooned.

Heim continued with long strides. ‘Humans live mostly for their children,’ Vadász said.

The riparian esplanade came in sight. Beyond its rail, the Carsac ran wide and murmurous toward the bay. Sunlight flared off that surface, a trumpet call made visible.

Now!
Heim thought. The blood roared in him. ‘One of our poets said what I mean,’ he spoke slowly.’
Wenn wir sind an der
Fluss gekommen, und im Falls wir die Moglichkeit sehen, dann werden wir ausspringen und nach dem Hafen schwimmen
.’

He dared not look to see how Vadász reacted. Dimly he heard Cynbe ask, in a bemused way, ‘What token those words?’

With absolute coolness, Vadász told him, ‘Man who is man does not surrender the hope of his loins unless manhood has died within.’