The Star Fox

“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. Coldness 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.”