In the Tree City of the Arbai night had come like a polite visitor, announcing itself with diffidence, moving slowly among the bridges and trellises, softly among the wraithlike inhabitants, quietly into each room to carpet every floor with shadow. Night had come gently; darkness had not come at all. Effulgent spheres lined each walkway and hung from each ceiling. They cast an opalescent glow, not enough light to work by and yet enough to see walls and floors and ramps, to know where one went, to see the faces of one’s friends, to see the ghosts as they walked in and out.
Among the houses fronting upon the high platform, several were less frequented by phantoms. In one of these Tony and Marjorie had spread their beds and arranged their belongings. The two Brothers, the priest, and Sylvan had selected another. Once that was done, they had assembled on the open platform to eat together, sharing their own rations and the strange fruits Rillibee had garnered from the nearby trees. Several of the foxen had been close by for a brief time. The humans had seen shadows, heard voices reminiscent of the great cry, felt questions in their most intimate minds, tried to answer. Eventually the presences had gone. Now the humans knew they were alone.
“There is a lot I don’t understand,” Tony said, conveying what they all felt. There had been an interchange, but most of it had been more enigmatic and tantalizing than informative.
“There is much I have never understood,” Brother Mainoa said. He looked very weary tonight, very old.
“These foxen are the children of the Hippae?” Father James asked. “They talked much of that.”
“Not children,” Brother Mainoa said. “No. No more than the butterfly is the child of the caterpillar.”
“Another metamorphosis,” Marjorie told them. “Hippae metamorphose into foxen.”
“Some do,” he assented. “Not all do.”
“All once did,” she insisted, sure of it. It was clear to her, though the means by which the knowledge had come was hard to define. She simply knew. “All the Hippae used to become foxen, long ago.”
“All once did,” he agreed. “And at that time, it was the foxen who laid the eggs.”
Marjorie rubbed her head, trying to remember things she had learned long ago in school. “It must have been a mutation,” she said. “Some of the Hippae must have mutated and began to reproduce precociously, while they were still in the Hippae stage. There are animals that do that even on Terra. Reproduce in their larval stage, I mean. But in order for that mutation to have survived, there must have been some reproductive advantage….”
“It is in the Hippae stage that they use caverns. Perhaps the Hippae guarded their own eggs more assiduously,” Father James offered. “Perhaps more of the Hippae eggs survived than did those of the foxen.”
“And in time, Hippae did most of the reproduction. And not all of them metamorphosed into these creatures, these foxen, anymore. How many foxen are there?”
“Planet-wide?” Brother Mainoa shook his head “Who knows? Every time the great cry is heard, these elder foxen know that a new one has been changed. They go out, tens and dozens of them, and try to find the new one—find it, welcome it, bring it into the forest where it will be safe. But if the Hippae find it first, they kill it while it is still weak and uncertain, or if it takes refuge in a copse, they get men on their backs and hunt it down.”
“Don’t the Hippae know that they themselves …” Father James shook his head.
Brother Mainoa laughed bitterly. “They don’t believe it. They don’t believe that they change into foxen. They refuse to believe it. They think they remain always as they are until they die. Many of them do die. Don’t you remember when you were a boy, Father? Did you ever think, then, that you would grow older?”
Sylvan moved restlessly along the braided railing, looking out into the night of the forest. “They must hate us,” he said. “All the time they were talking to you, I kept thinking how they must hate us bons.” “Because you hunt them?” Tony asked.