The Star Fox (26 page)

Only … the ways were choked with dead leaves; houses stared blank and blind; boats moldered in the harbor; machines rusted silent; the belfry rooks were dead or fled and a
fauquette
cruised the sky on lean wings, searching for prey. The last human thing that stirred was the aerospace port, twenty kilometers inland.

And those were not men or men’s devices bustling over its concrete. The airships bringing cargo had been designed by no Terrestrial engineer. The factories they served were windowless prolate domes, eerily graceful for all that they were hastily assembled prefabs. Conveyors, trucks, lifts were man-made, but the controls had been rebuilt for hands of
another shape and minds trained to another concept of number. Barracks surrounded the field, hundreds of buildings reaching over the hills; from above, they looked like open-petaled bronze flowers. Missiles stood tall among them, waiting to pounce. Auxiliary spacecraft clustered in the open. One was an armed pursuer, whose snout reached as high as the cathedral cross.

‘It must belong to a capital ship in planetary orbit.’ Heim decided. ‘And if that’s the only such, the other warships must be out on patrol. Which is maybe worth knowing.’

‘I do not see how you can use the information,’ Navarre said. ‘A single spacecraft of the line gives total air superiority when there is nothing against it but flyers. And our flyers are not even military.’

‘Still, it’s always helpful to see what you’re up against. Uh, you’re sure their whole power is concentrated here?’

‘Yes, quite sure. This area has most of our industrial facilities. There are garrisons elsewhere, at certain mines and plants, as well as at observation posts. But our scouts have reported those are negligible in themselves.’

‘So … I’d guess, then, knowing how much crowding Aleriona will tolerate – let me think – I’d estimate their number at around fifty thousand. Surely the military doesn’t amount to more than a fifth of that. They don’t need more defense. Upper-type workers – what we’d call managers, engineers, and so forth – are capable of fighting but aren’t trained for it. The lower-type majority have had combativeness bred out. So we’ve really only got ten thousand Aleriona to worry about. How many men could you field?’

‘Easily a hundred thousand – who would be destroyed the moment they ventured out of the forests.’

‘I know. A rifle isn’t much use when you face heavy ground and air weapons.’ Heim grimaced.

The flyer touched concrete at the designated point and halted. Its escort remained hovering. Navarre stood up. ‘
Sortons
,’ he said curtly, and led the way out the door.

Twenty Aleriona of the warrior class – lean, broad of chest, hair tight-braided under the conical helmets, faces handsome rather than beautiful, and expressionless – waited in file. The long sunrays turned their scaly garments almost incandescent. They did not draw the crooked swords at their belts or point their guns at the newcomers; they might have been statues.
Their officer stepped forward, making the droop-tailed bow with fingertips lightly touching that signified respect. He was taller than his followers, though still below average human height.

‘Well are you come,’ he sang in fairly good French. ‘Wish you rest or refreshment?’

‘No, thank you,’ Navarre said, slowly so the alien could follow his dialect. Against the fluid motion that confronted him, his stiffness looked merely lumpy. ‘We are prepared to commence discussions at once.’

‘Yet first ought you be shown your quarters. Nigh to the high masters of the Garden of War is prepared a place as best we might.’ The officer trilled an order. Several low-class workers appeared. They did not conform to Earth’s picture of Aleriona – their black-clad bodies were too heavy, features too coarse, hair too short, fur too dull, and there was nothing about them of that inborn unconscious arrogance which marked the leader breeds. Yet they were not servile, nor were they stupid. A million years of history, its only real change the glacial movement toward an ever more unified society, had fitted their very genes for this part. If the officer was a panther and his soldiers watchdogs, these were mettlesome horses.

In his role as aide, Vadász showed them the party’s baggage. They fetched it out, the officer whistled a note, the troopers fell in around the humans and started off across the field. There was no marching; but the bodies rippled together like parts of one organism. Aurore struck the contact lenses which protected them from its light and turned their eyes to rubies.

Heim’s own eyes shifted back and forth as he walked. Not many other soldiers were in evidence. Some must be off duty, performing one of those enigmatic rites that were communion, conversation, sport, and prayer to an Aleriona below the fifth level of mastery. Others would be at the missile sites or on air patrol. Workers and supervisors swarmed about, unloading cargo, fetching metal from a smelter or circuit parts from a factory to another place where it would enter some orbital weapon. Their machines whirred, clanked, rumbled. Nonetheless, to a man the silence was terrifying. No shouts, no talk, no jokes or curses were heard: only an occasional melodic command, a thin weaving of taped orchestral music, the pad-pad of a thousand soft feet.

Vadász showed his teeth in a grin of sorts. ‘
Ils considérent la
vie trés sérieusement
,’ he murmured to Navarre. ‘
Je parierais qu’ils ne font jamais de plaisanteries douteuses
.’

Did the enemy officer cast him a look of – incomprehension? ‘
Taisez vous!
’ Navarre said.

But Vadász was probably right, Heim reflected. Humour springs from a certain inward distortion. To that great oneness which was the Aleriona soul, it seemed impossible: literally unthinkable.

Except … yes, the delegates to Earth, most especially Admiral Cynbe, had shown flashes of a bleak wit. But they belonged to the ultimate master class. It suggested a difference from the rest of their species which—He dismissed speculation and went back to observing as much detail as he could.

The walk ended at a building some hundred meters from the edge of the field. Its exterior was no different from the other multiply curved structures surrounding it. Inside, though, the rooms had clearly been stripped, the walls were raw plastic and floors were stained where the soil of flowerbeds had been removed. Furniture, a bath cubicle, Terrestrial-type lights, plundered from houses, were arranged with a geometric precision which the Aleriona doubtless believed was pleasing to men. ‘Hither shall food and drink be brought you,’ the officer sang. ‘Have you wish to go elsewhere, those guards that stand outside will accompany.’

‘I see no communicator,’ Navarre said.

‘None there is. With the wilderness dwellers make you no secret discourse. Within camp, your guards bear messages. Now must we open your holders-of-things and make search upon your persons.’

Navarre reddened. ‘What? Monsieur, that violates every rule of parley.’

‘Here the rule is of the Final Society. Wish you not thus, yourselves you may backtake to the mountains.’ It was hard to tell whether or not that lilting voice held insult, but Heim didn’t think so. The officer was stating a fact.

‘Very well,’ Navarre spat. ‘We submit under protest, and this shall be held to your account when Earth has defeated you.’

The Aleriona didn’t bother to reply. Yet the frisking was oddly like a series of caresses.

No contraband was found, there not being any. Most of the colonists were surprised when the officer told them, ‘Wish you thus, go we this now to seek the Intellect Masters.’ Heim
recalling past encounters, was not. The Aleriona overlords had always been more flexible than their human counterparts. With so rigid a civilization at their beck, they could afford it.

‘Ah … just who are they?’ Navarre temporized.

The
imbiac
of planetary and space defense are they, with below them the prime engineering operator. And then have they repositories of information and advice,’ the officer replied. ‘Is not for you a similarity?’

‘I speak for the constabulary government of New Europe,’ Navarre said. These gentlemen are my own experts, advisers, and assistants. But whatever I agree to must be ratified by my superiors.’

Again the girlish face, incongruous on that animal body, showed a brief loosening that might betoken perplexity. ‘Come you?’ the song wavered.

‘Why not?’ Navarre said. ‘Please gather your papers, messieurs.’ His heels clacked on the way out.

Heim and Vadász got to the door simultaneously. The minstrel bowed. ‘After you, my dear Alphonse,’ he said. The other man hesitated, unwilling. But no, you had to maintain morale. He bowed back: ‘After
you
, my dear Gaston.’ They kept it up for several seconds.

‘Make you some ritual?’ the officer asked.

‘A most ancient one.’ Vadász sauntered off side by side with him.

‘Never knew I such grew in your race,’ the officer admitted.

‘Well, now, let me tell you—’ Vadász started an energetic argument.
He’s doing his job right well
, Heim conceded grudgingly.

Not wanting to keep the Magyar in his consciousness, he looked straight ahead at the building they were approaching. In contrast to the rest, it lifted in a single high curve, topped with a symbol resembling an Old Chinese ideogram. The walls were not blank bronze, but scored with microgrooves that turned them shiftingly, bewilderingly iridescent. He saw now that this was the source of the music, on a scale unimagined by men, that breathed across the port.

No sentries were visible. An Aleriona had nothing to fear from his underlings. The wall dilated to admit those who neared, and closed behind them.

There was no decompression chamber. The occupiers must find it easier to adapt themselves, perhaps with the help of
drugs, to the heavy wet atmosphere of this planet. A hall sloped upward, vaguely seen in the dull red light from a paraboloidal ceiling. The floor was carpeted with living, downy turf, the walls with phosphorescent vines and flowers that swayed, slowly keeping time to the music, and drenched the air with their odors. The humans drew closer together, as if for comfort. Ghost silent, ghost shadowy, they went with their guards to the council chamber.

It soared in a vault whose top was hidden by dusk, but where artificial stars glittered wintry keen. The interior was a vague, moving labyrinth of trellises, bushes, and bowers. Light came only from a fountain at the center, whose crimson-glowing waters leaped five meters out of a bowl carved like an open mouth, cascaded down again, and filled every corner of the jungle with their clear splash and gurgle. Walking around it, Heim thought he heard wings rustle in the murk overhead.

The conqueror lords stood balanced on tails and clawed feet, waiting. There were half a dozen all told. None wore any special insignia of rank, but the light flickered lovingly over metal-mesh garments, lustrous hair, and silver-sparked white fur. The angelic faces were in repose, the emerald eyes altogether steady.

To them the officer genuflected and the soldiers dipped their rifles. A few words were sung. The guards stepped back into darkness and the humans stood alone.

One Aleriona master arched his back and hissed. Almost instantly, his startlement passed. He trod forward so that his countenance came into plain view. Laughter belled from him, low and warm.

‘Thus, Captain Gunnar Heim,’ he crooned in English. ‘Strangeness, how we must ever meet. Remember you not Cynbe ru Taren?’

S
O
shattered was Heim’s universe that he was only dimly aware of what happened. Through the red gloom, trillings went among the Aleriona. One bristled and cried an order to the guards. Cynbe countermanded it with an imperious
gesture. Above the racket of his pulse, Heim heard the admiral murmur: ‘You would they destroy on this now, but such must not become. Truth, there can be no release; truth alike, you are war’s honored prisoners.’ And there were more songs, and at last the humans were marched back to their quarters. But Heim remained.

Cynbe dismissed his fellow chieftains and all but four guards. By then the sweat was drying on the man’s skin, his heartbeat was slowed, the first total despair thrust down beneath an iron watchfulness. He folded his arms and waited.

The Aleriona lord prowled to the fountain, which silhouetted him as if against liquid flames. For a while he played with a blossoming vine. The sole noises were music, water, and unseen circling wings. It was long before he intoned, softly and not looking at the man:

‘Hither fared I to have in charge the hunt for you the hunter. Glad was my hope that we might meet in space and love each the other with guns. Why came you to this dull soil?’

‘Do you expect me to tell you?’ Heim rasped.

‘We are kinfolk, you and I. Sorrow, that I must word-break and keep you captive. Although your presence betokens this was never meant for a real parley.’

‘It was, however. I just happened to come along. You’ve no right to hold the New Europeans, at least.’

‘Let us not lawsplit. We two rear above such. Release I the others, home take they word to your warship. Then may she well strike. And we have only my cruiser
Jubalcho
to meet her. While she knows not what has happened to you her soul,
Fox II
abides. Thus gain I time to recall my deep-scattered strength.’

The breath hissed between Heim’s teeth. Cynbe swung about. His eyes probed like fire weapons. ‘What bethink you?’ ‘Nothing!’ Heim barked frantically.

It raced within him:
He believes I took Fox down. Well, that’s natural. Not knowing about our meteorite gimmick, he’d assume that only a very small or a very fast craft could sneak past his guard. And why should I come in a tender? Fox on the surface could do tremendous damage, missile this base and strike at his flagship from a toadhole position
.

I don’t know what good it is having him misinformed but
–
play by ear, boy, play by ear. You haven’t got anything left except your rusty old wits
.

Cynbe studied him a while. ‘Not long dare I wait to act,’ he mused. ‘And far are my ships.’