The Star Fox (28 page)

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 stiirzen. 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. His 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.

H
IS
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, trees 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.

‘
Kádrhoztatás
, 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.’

Since Vadász looked more exhausted than himself, Heim started first. He didn’t hurry, mostly he let the current bear
him along, and reached the river mouth in good shape: so good that the sheer wonder of his escape got to him. He spent his time beneath the dock simply admiring light-sparkles on water, the rake of masts, the fluid chill enclosing his skin, the roughness of the bollard he held, the chuckle against hulls and their many vivid colors. His mood had just begun to ravel away in worry
(Damn, I should’ve told Endre what I know)
when the Magyar arrived.

‘Will they not seek us here first?’ Vadász asked.

‘M-m, I doubt it,’ Heim said. ‘Don’t forget, they’re from a dry planet. The idea of using water for anything but drinking doesn’t come natural to them; you notice they’ve left all these facilities untouched, though coastwise transport would be a handy supplement to their air freighters. Their first assumption ought to be that we went ashore as soon as we could and holed up in town. Still, we want to get out of here as fast as possible, so let’s find a boat in working order.’

‘There you must choose. I am a landlubber by heritage.’

‘Well, I never got along with horses, so honors are even.’ Heim risked climbing onto the wharf for an overview. He picked a good-looking pleasure craft, a submersible hydrofoil, and trotted to her. Once below, she’d be undetectable by any equipment the Aleriona had.

‘Can we get inside?’ the minstrel asked from the water.

‘
Ja
, she’s not locked. Yachtsmen trust each other.’ Heim unslipped the lines, pulled the canopy back, and extended an arm to help Vadász up on deck. They tumbled into the cabin and closed the glasite. ‘Now, you check the radio while I have a look at the engine.’

A year’s neglect had not much hurt the vessel. In fact, the sun had charged her accumulators to maximum. Her bottom was foul; but that could be lived with. Excitement surged in Heim. ‘My original idea was to find a communicator somewhere in town, get word to camp, and then skulk about hoping we wouldn’t be tracked down and wouldn’t starve,’ he said. ‘But now – hell, we might get back in person! It’ll at least be harder for the enemy to pick up our message and send a rover bomb after the source, if we’re at sea. Let’s go.’

The motor chugged. The boat slid from land. Vadász peered anxiously out the dome. ‘Why are they not after us in full cry?’ he fretted.

‘I told you how come. They haven’t yet guessed we’d try
this way. Also, they must be disorganized as a bawdy-house on Monday morning, after what I did to Cynbe.’ Nonetheless, Heim was glad to leave obstacles behind and submerge. He went to the greatest admissible depth, set the ‘pilot for a southeasterly course, and began peeling off his wet clothes.

Vadász regarded him with awe. ‘Gunnar,’ he said, in a tone suggesting he was not far from tears, ‘I will make a ballad about this, and it will not be good enough, but still they will sing it a thousand years hence. Because your name will live that long.’

‘Aw, shucks, Endre. Don’t make my ears burn.’

‘No, I must say what’s true. However did you conceive it?’

Heim turned up the heater to dry himself. The ocean around – murky green, with now and then a curiously shaped fish darting by – would dissipate infrared radiation. He had an enormous sense of homecoming, as if again he were a boy on the seas of Gea. For the time being, it overrode everything else. The frailty and incompleteness of his triumph could be seen later; let him now savor it.

‘I didn’t,’ he confessed. ‘The idea sort of grew. Cynbe was eager to … be friends or whatever. I talked him into visiting Bonne Chance, in the hope something might turn up that I could use for a break. It occurred to me that probably none of his gang could swim, so the riverside looked like the best place. I asked to have you along because we could use German under their noses. Also having two of us doubled the odds that one would get away.’

Vadász’s deference cracked in a grin. That was the most awful
Schweindeutsch
I have yet heard. You are no linguist.’

Memory struck at Heim. ‘No,’ he said harshly. Trying to keep his happiness a while, he went on fast: ‘We were there when I thought if I could pitch Cynbe in the drink, his guards would go all out to save him, rather than run along the bank shooting at us. If you can’t swim yourself, you’ve got a tough job rescuing another non-swimmer.’

‘Do you think he drowned?’

‘Well, one can always hope,’ Heim said, less callously than he sounded. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they lost at least a couple of warriors fishing him out. But we’ve likely not seen the last of him. Even if he did drown, they can probably get him to a revival machine before brain decay sets in. Still, while he’s out of commission, things are apt to be rather
muddled for the enemy. Not that the organization can’t operate smoothly without him. But for a while it’ll lack direction, as far as you and I are concerned, anyhow. That’s the time we’ll use to put well out to sea and call de Vigny.’

‘Why … yes, surely they can send a fast flyer to our rescue.’ Vadász leaned back with a cat-outside-canary smile. ‘
La belle
Danielle is going to see me even before she expected. Dare I say, before she hoped?’

Anger sheeted in Heim. ‘Dog your hatch, you clot-brain!’ he snarled. ‘This is no picnic. We’ll be lucky to head off disaster.’

‘What – what—’ Color left Vadász’s cheeks. He winced away from the big man. ‘Gunnar, did I say—’

‘Listen.’ Heim slammed a fist on the arm of his seat. ‘Our amateur try at espionage blew up the whole shebang. Have you forgotten the mission was to negotiate terms to keep our people from starving? That’s out. Maybe something can be done later, but right now we’re only concerned with staying alive. Our plan for evacuating refugees is out the airlock too.’ Cynbe jumped to the conclusion that
Fox
herself is on this planet. He’s recalled a lancer and a cruiser to supplement his flagship. Between them, those three can detect
Meroeth
raising mass, and clobber her. It won’t do us any good to leave her doggo, either. They’ll have air patrols with high-gain detectors sweeping the whole planet. So there goes de Vigny’s nice hidey-hole at Lac aux Nuages. For that matter, with three ships this close to her position,
Fox
herself is in mortal danger.

‘You blithering, self-centred rockhead! Did you think I was risking death just so we could escape? What the muck have we got to do with anything? Our people have got to be warned!’

With a growl, he turned to the inertial navigator panel. No, they weren’t very far out yet. But maybe he should surface anyway, take his chances, to cry what he knew at this instant.

The boat pulsed around him. The heater whirred and threw waves of warmth across his hide. There was a smell of oil in the air. Outside the ports, vision was quickly blocked – as he had been blocked, thwarted, resisted and evaded at every turn. Those ships will be here inside an Earth day,’ he said. ‘
Fox
better make for outer space, the rest of us for the woods.’

‘Gunnar—’ Vadász began.

‘Oh, be quiet!’

The minstrel flushed and raised his voice. ‘No. I don’t know what I have done to be insulted by you, and if you haven’t the decency to tell me, that must be your affair. But I have something to tell you, Captain. We can’t contact
Fox
in time.’

‘Huh?’ Heim whirled to face him.

‘Think for a moment. Diego has his big maser set erected near the lake. But morning is well along, and Diane is nearly full. It set for the Haute Garance hours ago. It won’t rise again for, I guess, thirty hours.’

‘
Satan
… i …
helvede
’ Heim choked. Strength drained from him. He felt the ache in his flesh and knew he had begun to grow old.

After a time in which he merely stared, Vadász said to him, timidly: ‘You are too much a man to let this beat you. If you think it so important, well, perhaps we can get
Meroeth
aloft. Her own communicator can reach the moon. The enemy satellites will detect her, and the cruiser close in. But she is lost anyway, you inform me, and she can surrender. We only need three or four men to do it. I will be one of them.’

Lightning-struck, Heim sprang to his feet. His head bashed the canopy. He looked up and saw a circle of sunlight, blinding on the ocean surface, above him.

‘Are you hurt?’ Vadász asked.

‘By heaven – and hell – and everything in between.’ Heim offered his hand. ‘Endre, I’ve been worse than a bastard. I’ve been a middle-aged adolescent. Will you forgive me?’

Vadász gripped hard. Perception flickered in his eyes. ‘Oh, so,’ he murmured. ‘The young lady … Gunnar, she’s nothing to me. Mere pleasant company. I thought you felt the same.’

‘I doubt that you do,’ Heim grunted. ‘Never mind. We’ve bigger game to hunt. Look, I happen to know what the orbits and starting positions of those ships were. Cynbe saw no reason not to tell me when I asked – I suppose unconsciously I was going on the old military principle of grabbing every piece of data that comes by, whether or not you think you’ll ever use it. Well, I also know their classes, which means I know their capabilities. From that, we can pretty well compute their trajectories. They can be pinpointed at any given time – close enough for combat purposes, but not close enough for their ground base to beam them any warning. Okay, so that’s one advantage we’ve got, however small. What else?’

He began to pace, two steps to the cabin’s end, two steps
back, fist beating palm and jaw muscles standing in knots. Vadász drew himself aside. Once more the cat’s grin touched his mouth. He knew Gunnar Heim in that mood.

‘Listen.’ The captain hammered out the scheme as he spoke. ‘
Meroeth’s
a big transport. So she’s got powerful engines. In spite of her size and clumsiness, she can move like a hellbat when empty. She can’t escape three ships on patrol orbit. But at the moment there’s only one, Cynbe’s personal
Jubalcho
. I don’t know her orbit, but the probabilities favor her being well away at any given time that
Meroeth
lifts. She could pursue, sure, and get so close that
Meroeth
can’t outrun a missile. But she ain’t gonna – I hope – because Cynbe knows that wherever I am,
Fox
isn’t likely very distant, and he’s got to protect his base against
Fox
till his reinforcements arrive. Or if the distance is great enough, he’ll assume the transport
is
our cruiser, and take no chances!

‘So … okay … given good piloting,
Meroeth
has an excellent probability of making a clean getaway. She can flash a message to
Fox
. But then – what? If
Fox
only takes us aboard, we’re back exactly where we started. No, we’re worse off, because the New Europeans have run low on morale, and losing their contact with us could well push them right into quitting the fight. So – wait – let me think—Yes!’ Heim bellowed. ‘Why not? Endre, we’ll go for broke!’