“I don’t know,” he said. “Something. Something we can’t see. Something with teeth.”
From the lowest floor of the Port Hotel winter quarters, Marjorie worked her way through the network of tunnels toward the barn, which stood almost at the wall of Com. The trip recorder could not guide her but it would keep her from becoming irretrievably lost. The barn was not far from the place where Hippae rampaged and killed. It would be difficult to get the horses out without being seen. However, if they could reach the swamp forest they might be safe. If they were seen, she would undoubtedly be slaughtered. She felt the anger of the Hippae, against her, personally. She was the one they hated. She had spied on them, gone into their cavern, ridden against them. They would not miss the chance to bring her down.
Even so, if she could get the horses out onto the slope, some of them would make it. She could get them moving in the right direction, at least. Once they reached the forest, First would take them, protect them. Gallant horses. They deserved better than this fangy death. They deserved meadows and foals and long days of grazing under the sun.
Her feet echoed on the stone. Dim lights picked out the junctures of one tunnel with another. When the trip recorder said she had come far enough in the proper direction, she began looking for a way up. The horses would be above her somewhere. Pray the barn had not yet attracted Hippae attention. Pray the horses were not injured, or dead.
No, said someone. The horses are safe.
She stopped, stunned into frozen immobility. That voice belonged to the wilderness, to the trees, not to these dry, dark corridors. When the shock passed, she turned toward the voice as a compass needle turns toward the north, quivering.
Here, it said. Here.
She crept toward the summons, upward along slanting corridors, up twisting flights of stairs, pulled like a fish on a line.
He was in the barn with the horses, lying across the door. She saw the troubled air, the miragelike wavering, the glint of tooth or eye. The horses chewed quietly, undisturbed. When she came in, Quixote whickered at her and she leaned against the wall, trembling. So. Was He the only one to get involved, or were there other foxen as well?
Why are you here? she asked.
I knew you would come here, He replied, in words, human words, clear as air.
She shook with the implications of that. I could not abandon my friends. she said.
I know, He said. I knew before, but my people didn’t believe in you.
She asked, Have they changed their minds’?
Yes. Because of these, He said. Because of the horses.
She saw herself on Quixote’s back, menaced from front and rear, the aircar above her offering escape, saw herself refusing to go. The picture in her mind was larger than life, freighted with enormous import. She would not leave the horses. Silly, she thought. I thought so at the time.
Silly, He agreed, using words again. Important Important to know one would risk herself for another not like herself. Important to know humans feel loyalty. Important to know friendship can extend from race to race.
Were the Arbai your friends?
A negation. She saw Arbai involved with Hippae, working with Hippae while foxen prowled nearby and the Arbai studiously avoided seeing them. To the foxen, it seemed the Arbai preferred to teach at arm’s length rather than communicate as the foxen did; she felt the fastidious withdrawal of the Arbai, their punctilious modesty of mind, similar to her own feelings, but carried so much further! They could not see evil, but they could perceive an invasion of privacy, and they rejected it. How familiar! How horrible!
He agreed. Nonetheless, He felt pity and guilt that they had died.
They died, she said, Now we are dying. The Hippae are up there. They’ll get into Commons and kill us.
Already in Commons. But not many are dying. Not this time.
You’re protecting us?
This time we know what is happening.
You didn’t know what was happening before? she asked. You didn’t know what was happening to the Arbai? It seemed impossible, and yet, would the foxen necessarily have known? The slaughter had been out on the prairie, away from the forest…
He said, Some hated humans because you hunted us. Some felt it was not our affair, not our concern, because you would not be our friends, no more than the Arbai. I told them Mainoa was friend. They said he was only one, a freak, unlike any other. I said no, there would be others. Then there was you. They say you, too, are freak, and I say there will be others yet. We have argued over it. Finally, we have compromised. Humor Almost laughter, yet with something sad and tentative in it. We agree if you are truly my friend, I can tell you.
Me?
If you will give your word. To be friend as Mainoa was friend. To be where I am.
She heard only the condition and assented to it at once. She had already decided to stay here She would not take Stella away from here. At least the people here understood what had happened to her.
I will give my word, she said.
To be where I am?
Yes.
Even if that is not here?
Not here? Where would He be, if not here? She waited for explanation and got none. Something told her she would receive none. If she could only see His face. See His expression… We see one another, He told her. We foxen.
She flushed. Of course they saw one another, in their intimacy. As she could have seen them if she had let go of herself and joined them. As humans stripped away their day-to-day habiliments to come to their lovers naked, so foxen stripped away concealing illusion to perceive the reality…
But she could not see Him now. If she accepted this condition, it would have to be blindly, like a ritual, like a marriage ceremony, swearing to forsake all others for this one, this enigma, with no more certainty than there had been before. Swearing to give up her central self for something else. She shivered. Oh, perilous. Take it or leave it.
How could she? This is what Rigo had wanted, too, and she had tried, over and over, but could not. Because she had not known him, had not trusted him… Did she trust this one?
He had known where to find her. He had committed Himself and His people to saving her and her people. What else could He have done to be trustworthy? What else would she have him do?
She sighed, choking on the words, committing herself forever. “Yes. I promise.”
He showed her then why and how the Arbai had died. Why men were dying.
When she understood, she leaned against Him, her mind whirling in a disorderly ferment of ideas, things she had heard, connections she had made. He did not interrupt her. At last things began to fall into place. She only partially understood, and yet the answer was there, close, like a treasure sparkling in a flowing stream, disclosing itself.
There is something you must get for me, she said. Then I must go through these tunnels into town…
Marjorie came into the cavern where Lees Bergrem was huddled over a desk. For a time she stood in the corner, unseen, putting her thoughts together. Lees looked up, aware of being observed.
“Marjorie?” she asked. “I thought you were at the Port Hotel! I thought the Hippae had you trapped!”
“There’s at least one tunnel under the wall. I came back through it,” she said. “I had to talk to you ”
“No time,” the other said, turning back to her work. “No time to talk about anything.”
“A cure,” she said. “I think I know.”
The doctor turned burning eyes. “Know? Just like that, you know?”
“Know something important,” she said. “Two important things, really. Yes. Just like that.”
“Tell me.”
“First important thing: The Hippae killed the Arbai by kicking dead bats through their transporters. We don’t have transporters, so the Hippae have been killing us by putting dead bats on our ships.”
“Dead bats!” She pursed her lips, concentrating. “The bon Damfels man said that was symbolic behavior!”
“Oh, yes. It is symbolic. The problem is that we thought of it as purely symbolic. We should have remembered that symbols are often distillations of reality — that flags were once banners flown during battle. That a crucifix was once a real device for execution. Both are symbols of something that is or was once real.”