The Star Fox

Now we ask him! flared in Heim. His voice would not remain calm any longer; but Vadász didn’t notice. “Your story, I gather from what bits and pieces have leaked past this ‘unofficial official censorship’—your story is that the people are not dead on New Europe. Right?”

“Right, sir. They fled into the mountains, every one. of them.”

“The Haute Garance,” Heim nodded. He had all he could do merely to nod. “Good guerrilla country. Lots of cover, most never mapped, and you can live off the land.”

“You have been there!” Vadász set the bottle down and stared.

“Pretty often, while in the Navy. It was a favorite spot to put in for overhaul and planet leave. And then I spent four months in a stretch on New Europe by myself, recovering from this.” Heim touched the mark on his forehead.

Vadász peered close through the dappled moonlight. “Did the Aleriona do that to you?”

“No. This was over twenty years ago. I bought it while we were putting down the Hindu-German trouble on Lilith, which .you’re probably too young to remember. The skirmishes with Alerion didn’t begin till later.” Heim spoke absently. For this moment the drive and ferocity in him were overlaid by—

Red roofs and steep narrow streets of Bonne Chance, winding down along the River Carsac to the Bale des Pecheurs, which lay purple and silver to the world’s edge. Lazy days, drinking Pernod in a sidewalk cafe and lapping up the ruddy sunshine as a cat laps milk. When he got better, hunting trips into the highlands with Jacques Boussard and Toto Astier … good bucks, open of heart and hand, a little crazy as young men ought to be. Madelon—

He shook himself and asked roughly, “Do you know who is, or was, in charge?”

“A Colonel de Vigny of the planetary constabulary. He assumed command after the mairie was bombed, and organized the evacuation.”

“Not old Robert de Vigny? My God! I knew him.” Heim’s fist clenched on the concrete. “Yes, in that case the war is still going on.”

“It cannot last,” Vadász mumbled. “Given time, the Aleriona will hunt everyone down.”

“I know the Aleriona too,” Heim said. He drew a long breath and looked at the stars. Not toward the sun Aurore. Across a hundred and fifty light-years, it would be lost to his eyes; and it lay in the Phoenix anyway, walled off from him by the heavy curve of Earth. But he could not look straight at the minstrel while he asked, “Did you meet one Madelon Dubois? That’d be her maiden name. I expect she’s long married.”

“No.” Vadász’s drink-slurred voice became instantly clear and gentle. “I am sorry, but I did not.”

“Well—” Heim forced a shrug. “The chances were way against it There’s supposed to be half a million people on New Europe. Were the … the casualties heavy?”

“I heard that Coeur d’Yvonne, down in Pays d’Or, was struck by a hydrogen missile. Otherwise—no, I do not believe so. The fighting was mostly in space, when the Aleriona fleet disposed of the few Federation Navy ships that happened to be near. Afterward they landed in force, but in uninhabited, areas at first, so that except for a couple of raids with nothing worse than lasers and chemical bombs, the other towns had time to evacuate. They had been called on to surrender, of course, but de Vigny refused and so many went off with him that the rest came too.”

Damn it, 1 have got to keep this impersonal. At least till I know more. “How did you escape? The newscasts that mentioned you when you first arrived were vague about it. Deliberately, I suppose.”

Vadász made the bottle gurgle. “I was there when the attack came,” he said, thickly again. “The French commandeered a merchant vessel and sent it after help, but it was destroyed when scarcely above the atmosphere. There was also a miner in from Naqsa.” He got the non-human pronunciation nearly right “You may know that lately there has been an agreement, the Naqsans may dig in Terre du Sud for a royalty. So far off, they had seen nothing, knew nothing, and cloud cover above Garance would keep them ignorant After a radio discussion, the Aleriona commander let them go, I daresay not wanting to antagonize two races at once. Of course, the ship was not allowed to take passengers. But I had earlier flitted down for a visit and won the captain’s fancy—that a human should be interested in his songs, and even learn a few—so he smuggled me aboard and kept me hidden from the Aleriona inspectors. De Vigny thought I could carry his message—hee, hee!” Vadász’s laugh was close to hysteria. Fresh tears ran out of his eyes. “From Naqsa I had to, what you call, bum my way. It took time. And was all, all for nothing.”

He laid the guitar across his knees, strummed, and sang low:

“ ‘Adieu, ma mie, adieu, man coeur,
Adieu, ma mie, adieu, man coeur,
Adieu, mon espérance—”