Poul Anderson - The Star Fox

Things are looking up, he thought with a growing gladness. We really do have a good chance to rescue this planet. And if part of the price is that I stop raiding—why, I’ll be on Earth too.

Did it sing within him, or had a bird called from the ness ahead?

No. Birds don’t chord on twelve strings. Heim grinned and swam forward as softly as he was able. Endre’s adrenal glands would benefit from a clammy hand laid on him from behind and a shouted “Boo!”

The song strengthened in his ears:

As it ended, Heim saw Vadász seated on a log, silhouetted against the sky. He was not alone.

Her voice came clear through the night. “ Oh, c’est beau. Je n’aurais jamais cru que les allemands pouvaient avoir une telle sensibilité.”

Vadász laughed. “ Vous savez, Goethe vecut il y a long-temps. Mais pourquoi rappeler de vieilles haines pendant une si belle nuit?”

She shivered. “ L’haine n’est pas morte. Elle nous entoure.”

He drew his cloak around them both. “ Oubliez tout cela, mademoiselle. L’affaire est en bonne mains. Nous sommes Venus id pour admirer, parler, et chanter, n’est-ce pas?”

“Out.” Hesitantly: “ Mais mes parents—”

“Pff! Il n’est pas tard. La nuit, le jour, c’est la même chose pour les Neo-Européens. Vous n’avez pas confiance en moi? Je suis aussi innocent qu’une grenouille perdue de rhumatismes.

Vous avez entendu mes coassements.”

Danielle giggled. “ Coassez encore, je vous en prie.”

“Le souhait d’une si charmante demoiselle est un ordre. Ah… quelque chose à la Magyar?

Un chant d’amour.”

The strings toned very softly, made themselves a part of night and woods and water.

Vadász’s words twined among them. Danielle sighed and leaned a bit closer. Heim swam away.

No, he told himself, and again: No. Endre isn’t being a bastard. He asked me.

The grip on his throat did not loosen. He ended his quietness and churned the water with steamboat violence. He’s… He’s young. I could have been her father. But I junked the chance. I thought it had come back. No. I’m being ridiculous. Oh, Connie, Connie! Ved Guid—

His brain went in rage to the tongue of his childhood. By God, if he does anything—I’m not too old to break a man’s neck.

What the hell business is it of mine? He stormed ashore and abraded himself dry. Clothes on, he stumbled through the woods. There was a bottle in the tent, not quite empty.

A man waited for him. He recognized one of de Vigny’s aides. “Well?”

The officer sketched a salute. “I ’ave a message for you, monsieur. The colonel ’as contact the enemy. They receive a delegation in Bonne Chance after day ’as break.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“But, monsieur—”

“I know. We have to confer. Well, I’ll come when I can. We’ve plenty of time. It’s going to be a long night.” Heim brushed past the aide and closed his tent flap.

Below, the Carsac Valley rolled broad and rich. Farmsteads could be seen, villages, an occasional factory surrounded by gardens—but nowhere man; the land was empty, livestock run wild, weeds reclaiming the fields. Among them flowed the river, metal-bright in the early sun.

When he looked out the viewports of the flyer where he sat, Heim saw his escort, four Aleriona military vehicles. The intricate, gaily colored patterns painted on them did not soften their barracuda outlines. Guns held aim on the unarmed New Europeans. We could change from delegates to prisoners in half a second, he thought, and reached for his pipe.

“Pardon.” Lieutenant Colonel Charles Navarre, head of the eight-man negotiation team, tapped his shoulder. “Best lock that away, monsieur. We have not had tobacco in the maquis for one long time.”

“Damn! You’re right. Sorry.” Heim got up and stuck his smoking materials in a locker.

“They are no fools, them.” Navarre regarded the big man carefully. “Soon we land. Is anything else wrong with you, Captain Alphonse Lafayette?”

“No, I’m sure not,” Heim said in English. “But let’s, go down the list. My uniform’s obviously thrown together, but that’s natural for a guerrilla. I don’t look like a typical colonist, but they probably won’t notice, and if they do it won’t surprise them.”

“Comment?” asked another officer.

“Didn’t you know?” Heim said. “Aleriona are bred into standardized types. From their viewpoint, humans are so wildly variable that a difference in size and coloring is trivial. Nor have they got enough familiarity with French to detect my accent, as long as I keep my mouth shut most of the time. Which’ll be easy enough, since I’m only coming along in the hope of picking up a little naval intelligence.”

“Yes, yes,” Navarre said impatiently. “But be most careful about it.” He leaned toward Vadász, who had a seat in the rear. “You too, Lieutenant Gaston Girard.”

“On the contrary,” the minstrel said, “I have to burble and chatter and perhaps irritate them somewhat. There is no other way to probe the mood of non-humans. But have no fear. This was all thought about. I am only a junior officer, not worth much caution on their part.” He smiled tentatively at Heim. “You can vouch for how good I am at being worthless, no, Gunnar?”

Heim grunted. Pain and puzzlement nickered across the Magyar’s features. When first his friend turned cold to him, he had put it down to a passing bad mood. Now, as Heim’s distantness persisted, there was no chance—in this crowded, thrumming cabin—to ask what had gone wrong.

The captain could almost read those thoughts. He gusted out a breath and returned to his own seat forward. I’m being stupid and petty and a son of a bitch in general, he knew. But I can’t forget Danielle, this sunrise with the fog drops like jewels in her hair, and the look she gave him when we said good-by. Wasn’t I the one who’d earned it?

He was quite glad when the flyer started down.

Through magnification before it dropped under the horizon, he saw that Bonne Chance, had grown some in twenty years. But it was still a small city, nestled on the land’s seaward shoulder: a city of soft-hued stucco walls and red tile roofs, of narrow ambling streets, suspension bridges across the Carsac, a market square where the cathedral fronted on outdoor stalls and outdoor cafes, docks crowded with water-craft, and everywhere trees, Earth’s green chestnut and poplar mingled with golden bellefleur and gracis. The bay danced and dazzled, the countryside rolled ablaze with wild-flowers, enclosing the town exactly as they had done when he wandered hand in hand with Madelon.

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 bills; 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.