Poul Anderson - The Star Fox

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. 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.”

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.

“Nah. 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.”