The Star Fox

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 s5nd 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.”

Good lad! Heim cheered. But most of his consciousness crawled with the guns at his back.

They started west along the embankment. “Still apprehend I not,” Cynbe sang. “Also Aleriona make their lives for those lives that are to come. What difference?”

Heim didn’t believe he could hide his purpose much longer. So let it be this moment that he acted—the chance did not look too bad—let him at worst be shattered into darkness and the end of fear.

He stopped and leaned on the rail. “The difference,” he said, “you can find in the same man’s words. Ich werde diesen Wesen in das Wasser stürzen. Dann springen wir beide. It’s, uh, it’s hard to translate. But look down here.”

Vadász joined them. Glee quirked his lips, a tiny bit, but he declared gravely: “The poem comes from a saying of Heraclitus. ‘No man bathes twice in the same river.’ ”

“That have I read.” Cynbe shuddered. “Seldom was thus dreadful a thought.”

“You see?” Heim laid a hand on his shoulder and urged him forward, until he also stood bent over the rail. Hts gaze was forced to the flowing surface, and held there as if . hypnotized. “Here’s a basic human symbol for you,” Heim said. “A river, bound to the sea, bound to flood a whole countryside if you dam it. Motion, power, destiny, time itself.”

“Had we known such on Alerion—” Cynbe whispered. “Our world raised naked rock.”

Heim closed fingers on his neck. The man’s free hand slapped down on the rail. A surge of arm and shoulder cast him and Cynbe across. They struck the current together.

VIII

His boots dragged him under. Letting the Aleriona go, he writhed about and clawed at the fastenings. The light changed from green to brown and then was gone. Water poured past, a cool and heavy force that tumbled him over and over. One off—two off—he struck upward with arms and legs. His lungs felt near bursting. Puff by grudged puff, he let out air. His mind began to wobble. Here goes, he thought, a breath or a firebeam. He stuck out as little of his face as he could, gasped, saw only the embankment, and went below again to swim.

Thrice more he did likewise, before he guessed he had come far enough to risk looking for Vadász. He shook the wetness from hair and eyes and continued in an Australian crawl. Above the, tinted concrete that enclosed the river, frees trapped sunlight in green and gold. A few roofpeaks showed, otherwise his ceiling was the sky, infinitely blue.

Before long Vadász’s head popped into sight. Heim waved at him and threshed on until he was under a bridge. It gave some protection from searchers. He grabbed a pier and trod water. The minstrel caught up and panted.

“Kárhoztatás, Gunnar, you go as if the devil himself were after you!”

“Isn’t he? Though it helps a lot that the Aleriona don’t see so well here. Contacts stop down the brightness for them, but Aurore doesn’t emit as much of the near infrared that they’re most sensitive to as The Eith does.” Heim found it calming to speak academically. It changed him from a hunted animal to a military tactician. “Just the same, we’d better stay down as much as we can. And stay separate, too. You know the old Quai des Coquillages—it’s still there? Okay, I’ll meet you underneath it. If one of us waits an hour, let him assume the other bought a farm.”